ORLANDO, Fla. — A federal judge Friday cleared the way for a California-based company to continue pursuing a challenge to a 2024 state law that bans selling and manufacturing “cultivated” meat in Florida.
Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker issued a 29-page decision that will allow UPSIDE Foods Inc. to move forward with arguments that the law violates the dormant Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. He dismissed other allegations that a federal poultry-products law prevents Florida from imposing the ban.
The state law, in part, makes it a second-degree misdemeanor to sell or manufacture cultivated meat. The manufacturing process includes taking a small number of cultured cells from animals and growing them in controlled settings to make what is often described as lab-grown meat.
Walker said the dormant Commerce Clause is designed to prevent discrimination against interstate commerce to protect local businesses. UPSIDE has contended that the law was passed to insulate the Florida agriculture industry from out-of-state competitors.
“It may ultimately be the case that Florida’s cultivated meat ban does not actually provide a benefit to Florida’s in-state conventional meat or agricultural industries, or that cultivated meat does not compete with businesses in those industries,” Walker wrote. “But taking plaintiff’s allegations in the light most favorable to plaintiff as this court is required to do on a motion to dismiss, this court concludes that plaintiff has plausibly alleged that Florida’s ban violates the dormant Commerce Clause because it discriminates in effect against interstate commerce.”
Friday’s decision on motions by the defendants, Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson and state attorneys, to dismiss the case came after Walker in October rejected UPSIDE’s request for a preliminary injunction to halt the law. The company appealed that decision to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where the issue remains pending.
The Legislature last year approved the ban as part of a broader Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services bill (SB 1084). Backers, at least in part, cited questions about the safety of cultivated meat.
“The statutory amendments in SB 1084 ensure that a new and unproven category of food product is not distributed for consumption among Floridians,” Simpson’s motion to dismiss the case said. “Such health-and-safety matters are areas of historical state concern, and the Florida Legislature is competent to regulate them.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2023 approved UPSIDE to manufacture and sell its chicken products.
While Walker refused to dismiss the dormant Commerce Clause claim, he tossed out arguments that the state law is preempted by a federal measure known as the Poultry Products Inspection Act.
Gov. Ron DeSantis traveled to rural Hardee County last year to sign the law with members of the cattle industry on hand. While behind a podium that featured a sign saying, “Save Our Beef,” DeSantis said the law would protect against “an ideological agenda that wants to finger agriculture as the problem.”
DeSantis also called the products “fake meat” and said Florida was pushing “back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals.”
But Uma Valeti, chief executive officer of UPSIDE, issued a statement after Friday’s decision that said the company “is not looking to replace conventional meat, which will always have a place at the table.” UPSIDE is represented by lawyers from the Institute for Justice, a national legal group.
“All we are asking for is the right to compete, so that Floridians can try our product and see that it is possible to have delicious meat without the need for slaughtering animals,” Valeti said. “Today’s ruling is an important step towards securing that right.”
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