Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster, Ron Hays caught up with NCBA Associate Director for Governmental Affairs, Sigrid Johannes, about the U.S. Department of Defense’s recent decision not to pursue feeding lab-grown protein to our military.
NCBA has worked with agriculture allies in Congress to secure the introduction of several amendments to the Fiscal Year 2025 Defense Appropriations bill, National Defense Authorization Act, and Fiscal Year 2025 Agriculture Appropriations bill, aimed at preventing lab-grown protein from ever showing up on the plates of American servicemembers. In late June, their success was confirmed.
How did this issue ever come to their awareness? “It is a good lesson to always check the grant activity that’s going on,” Johannes said. “The Federal Government funds a huge number of projects in all kinds of sectors and this is one we found by looking at the grant sectors that went out in May.”
A company named Biomade had released a proposal asking for projects related to developing cell-cultured protein for human consumption, among other things. After discovering the proposal, NCBA took action to block the funding stream for it.
“We were very fortunate that we had a large number of allies in Congress – people interested both from the agriculture side and the military side – who jumped in to help us take action on that,” Johannes remarked.
The Department of Defense confirmed that they were no longer pursuing the technology for food consumption but saw fit to continue researching it for other defense and potentially medical applications.
“We certainly respect their right to do that,” Johannes admitted. “Innovation and scientific progress are important, and we want our military to have the best tools. However, there is a big difference between the industrial application and the food that you are putting into your body. We are very glad that this product isn’t going to be considered anymore for food purposes.”
She reiterated the abundance of production within the beef industry, even without including the other livestock sectors in commodities. “As a whole, American farmers and ranchers are more than capable of meeting any kind of demand for protein that the military has, and we are glad that they recognize that.”
Cell-cultured protein is still very far from being a practical product in the market with only two places in the United States where, at one time, it could be purchased: a restaurant in San Diego and one in Washington D.C. Both have since removed it from their menus.
“It is still a sector that is very new and is struggling to figure out how to scale this up to a commercial production system,” Johannes explained. “That doesn’t mean they won’t get there. They are certainly trying to make progress and are getting billions of dollars in private investment from your Silicon Valley folks and, in some cases, your meat-packing facilities, like Tyson, that are playing both sides of the coin. Eventually, we will be talking about a scenario where those products are widely available, but there are still a lot of market and regulatory hurdles that they need to clear before then.
“At the end of the day, it’s hard to scale up a product that doesn’t have a huge demand.”
Johannes spoke of a company called Sci-Fi Foods in the Bay Area of California, that touted a very innovative process of using crisper technology to produce cell-cultured beef. The company folded before its product even reached the market. She said that while it is a product that will continue to exist and may even grow, the industry’s momentum will be painstakingly gained as most Americans aren’t asking for its product.
The NCBA is prepared to compete with cell-cultured protein but continues to work hard to get the Fair Labeling Act passed. “We think it is extremely important that the label on the package tells the consumer exactly what they are buying. We are not afraid to compete with this product in the grocery store. We are very confident that the overwhelming majority of Americans are going to continue to choose real meat raised by real farmers and ranchers, but we need to make sure that they know what they are buying. So having that imitation word on the label, very clearly, very legibly on these cell-cultured products is very important to us.”
The Beef Buzz is a regular feature heard on radio stations around the region on the Radio Oklahoma Ag Network and is a regular audio feature found on this website as well. Click on the LISTEN BAR at the top of the story for today’s show and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today.
