On the first day of May, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida signed SB 1084, a bill that completely prohibits the production and sale of lab-grown meat in the Sunshine State.
We must ask: Why?
Announcing the new law, DeSantis proposed that “Florida is fighting 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.” In concert, the governor’s office declared that the State of Florida had taken “action to stop the World Economic Forum’s goal of forcing the world to eat lab-grown meat and insects.”
Odd as it may sound, it’s true that the ultimate aim of many of those who champion lab-grown meat — or, rather: lab-grown “meat” — is, indeed, to decree that the people of the world enjoy diets that they would never choose of their own volition. Bill Gates, who has invested heavily in this industry, has said “all rich countries should move to 100% synthetic meat” and suggested that governments could “use regulation to totally shift the demand.” Preventing this sort of dystopian intervention into people’s diets is a worthy endeavor. But there is a profound difference between fighting back against mandates and prohibiting consumer products per se, and, here, Florida has done the latter. In so doing, the state has taken a wholly worthwhile cause — the cause of individual choice — and sullied it with an unlovely combination of hypocrisy and two-bit protectionism.
Celebrating the move, the state’s commissioner of agriculture, Wilton Simpson, explained that the state “must protect our incredible farmers and the integrity of American agriculture” and described lab-grown meat as “a disgraceful attempt to undermine our proud traditions and prosperity.” “Together,” Simpson promised, “we will keep Florida’s agricultural industry strong and thriving.” In and of itself, that is a fine goal. But we cannot help but notice that it is a wholly separate goal from the one that Governor DeSantis and his legislative allies have been advancing in favor of the law.
That case is that it is unacceptable for governments to tell people what to eat. But has not Florida done precisely the same thing? The bill’s authors talk disparagingly of bans, but they have just issued one; they fret about mandates, but they have just added a mandate to the lawbooks; they worry about subsidies and “nudges” and industrial policy, but, as the agriculture commissioner openly admits, this decision was taken with the “thriving” of the existing market in mind. The rhetoric of its architects notwithstanding, the result of this change has not been an increase in liberty, but a reduction.
As such, the act represents an overreach — an overreach taken with good intentions, no doubt, but an overreach nevertheless. A better approach would have been for Florida to pass a law that protected the freedom of Floridians to eat whatever they want; that prohibited the use of state money in furtherance of the development of lab-grown “meat” or any other consumer fare; that reiterated that institutions such as the WEF wield no authority in America, and never will; and that preemptively stated Florida’s opposition to the claim — should it ever come — that the federal government’s commerce-clause powers extend to the superintendence of groceries. Better still, Florida could have used its referendum system to install these provisions into the state’s constitution. Instead, it set the precedent that the government can decide which sorts of food ought to be consumed by the citizenry. It may regret that, in time.