Texas Bans Your Freedom to Choose Cultivated Meat

Texas has just become the seventh US state to ban the sale of cultivated meat, joining a growing list of states hell-bent on keeping their citizens firmly attached to the carcass. From September, selling “cell-cultured protein” will be illegal, courtesy of Governor Greg Abbott and a chorus of cattle industry cheerleaders who claim it will stop people from “being a science experiment.”

Senate Bill 261 outlaws any food derived from harvested animal cells replicated in a lab — a move lauded by the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association (TSCRA). Unsurprisingly, TSCRA, which represents 28,000 beef producers, sees anything threatening the business of slaughter as an existential enemy. Meanwhile, Texas remains the country’s largest cow flesh producer and one of its biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. But apparently, maintaining this status quo is more important than even discussing alternatives.

This isn’t a lone Texas tantrum. Florida, South Dakota, Alabama, Nebraska, Mississippi, and Indiana have already locked arms to keep cultivated meat out. Ironically, this move clashes with American identity myths about “freedom of choice” and “innovation.” In a taste test event by UPSIDE Foods in Florida before its own ban, most people — regardless of political leaning — opposed outlawing cultivated meat after trying it. Many described it as a fundamental attack on consumer freedom. One attendee called the ban “completely based on scare tactics and political nonsense.”

Cultivated meat is animal flesh grown from cells, without slaughter. While it might sound like a sci-fi experiment, it’s a direct response to the environmental and ethical nightmare of industrial animal farming. The global meat industry is responsible for nearly 60% of food-related greenhouse gas emissions. Beef, the poster child of Texan pride, is the worst offender. And yet, instead of confronting this reality, lawmakers ban an alternative that could reduce the number of living beings forced into existence, exploited, and butchered.

At Herbivore Club, we’re crystal clear: we reject animal commodification in all forms. From an ethical perspective, plant-based meats are already superior; they replicate the sensory experience without involving animal cells at all. However, banning cultivated meat is not a moral victory. It’s a power grab to protect the animal agriculture machine, not the animals themselves. Cultivated meat — flawed as it is — is ethically superior to flesh hacked from sentient individuals. Blocking it doesn’t move society towards justice; it stalls progress and keeps billions trapped in the system.

We don’t celebrate bans that shut down something less harmful than the status quo. Instead, we push for a world where no one — human or non-human — is treated as a resource, where taste buds no longer dictate who lives and who dies.

If the cattle lobby and lawmakers were truly worried about “science experiments,” they might start by looking at the genetic manipulation, forced breeding, and routine mutilations happening every day in their own industry.

Cultivated meat isn’t the end goal. It’s a stepping stone that shouldn’t be banned but surpassed — by normalising plant-based foods and finally ending the idea that flesh, in any form, is a necessity. Texas has chosen to defend the exploitation. It’s not freedom. It’s fear dressed up as tradition. And it’s exactly the mindset we must dismantle.