Governor bans Nebraska agencies from buying ‘Lab-Grown Meat’

The governor of Nebraska went forward Thursday with an executive order barring agencies of the Cornhusker State from buying lab-grown meat.

“To the fullest extent permitted by law, State agencies shall not procure Lab-Grown Meat,” according to the Nebraska order, now signed by the governor.

Gov. Jim Pillen (R) said, according to a Friday press release, that “Nebraska farmers and ranchers, like those here today, are committed to producing the best food products anywhere.”

“We feed the world and we save the planet more effectively and more efficiently than anybody else and I will defend those practices with my last breadth,” Pillen continued.

Pillen’s signing of the order follows Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) signing of a similar bill earlier this year banning lab-grown meat in his state. He said at the time 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.”

“Our administration will continue to focus on investing in our local farmers and ranchers, and we will save our beef,” DeSantis said in a press release at the time.

Good Meat, which describes itself as “the first company in the world to sell cultivated meat” on its website, said at the time of the signing that it was “disappointed” DeSantis “signed into law the criminalization of cultivated meat in” the Sunshine State.

“In a state that purportedly prides itself on being a land of freedom and individual liberty, its government is now telling consumers what meat they can or cannot purchase,” Good Meat continued in a post on social platform X.

Florida later faced a federal lawsuit from Upside Foods, a company producing lab-cultivated meat, pushing back on the Sunshine State’s law banning lab-grown meat. 

The Hill has reached out to Good Meat.