While the complete ban will take effect in September, lawmakers have given it a best-before date.
AUSTIN, Texas — Two-thirds of Americans are willing to try lab-grown or “cultivated” meat, according to one study. But if you live in Texas, it might be a while before you get the chance.
This past Friday, Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 261 into law, banning the manufacture, processing, possession, distribution, offering for sale and sale of cell-cultured protein products – also known as lab-grown meat – for human consumption within Texas.
Texas joins a handful of other states that have instituted a ban, though legal challenges have begun to those laws already. The Texas bill received bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate.
Lab-grown meat – also called “cultivated meat,” “cultured meat,” and “cell-based meat” – is real animal meat made by growing animal cells in a controlled environment, such as a lab, outside the body of a living animal.
The Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, which represents beef producers, said that the new law will “prevent Texas consumers from being a science experiment” and that it protects “the high standards of the beef industry and the livelihoods of the hardworking Texans who sustain it.”
Texas Policy Research, a nonprofit research organization that advocates for limited government, advocated against the bill and wrote that its approach “undermines individual liberty, market freedom, and scientific advancement.”
Research shows consumers prefer the meat they’re used to over lab-grown meat. A March 2024 Purdue survey showed that consumers find cultivated meats to be less healthy, more exotic and less appetizing than their animal-sourced counterparts.
Lab-grown meat is very new, however. The first commercial sale of it was in 2020 at a restaurant in Singapore. The first sale in the U.S. wasn’t until 2023, when two California-based companies were approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to sell lab-grown chicken.
The new law will go into effect on Sept. 1, 2025, but the Texas ban on lab-grown meat has an expiration date. Unless the Legislature acts to extend or renew the prohibition, it will automatically end on September 1, 2027.