New ‘fake meat’ law takes effect next week

WASHINGTON — A new state law regulating lab-grown and plant-based meat-like food takes effect July 1. The bill, titled Senate File 2391, requires clear labeling for meat and egg substitutes, and authorizes the state to embargo processing plants that provide “mislabeled” products to grocery stores.

Advocates say it’s a win for transparency at the grocery store, where consumers may sometimes struggle to differentiate between farm-raised meat and various substitutes that use plants, insects, or even lab-grown cells.

Gov. Kim Reynolds signed the legislation in May. In a statement, she said the law “prohibits companies from exploiting the trust consumers have with our livestock producers.”

Legal analysts say most such products already have labels disclosing their non-meat nature, but the new law will require that those labels have a “conspicuous and prominent qualifying term” close to meat-adjacent terms. So while a bacon substitute, for example, could still use the phrase “bacon” in its packaging, it would also have to use terms like “plant-based” or “meat free” or “vegan,” somewhere close to the word “bacon.”

State Sen. Dawn Driscoll — herself a cattle farmer — championed the legislation last session, saying it was a top priority of hers at a number of public meetings in her district, which includes Washington County, a powerhouse of Iowa’s livestock industry and the state’s biggest pork-producing county.

“As the number one meat processing state in the country, Iowa must lead on this issue,” she said in an email. “Lab-grown products are not the same as the high-quality beef, pork, or other meats raised by Iowa farm families. It’s not always easy for us in the livestock industry to tell our story, but with the meat integrity bill we are playing offense and showing livestock producers that we value the high-quality meat that is raised here in Iowa.”

Food retailers Hy-Vee and Fareway did not reply to requests for comments on the bill from The Southeast Iowa Union. A representative from Impossible Foods said the company’s products didn’t meet Iowa’s definition of “cultivated protein food products” because they didn’t use any animal cells, but did not reply to a request for comments on S.F. 2391’s clauses regarding plant-based meat substitutes.

Iowa is not the first state to enact limits on alternative meat sales. A legal review from New York University in 2020 said 13 states had enacted some sort of labeling requirements for meat substitutes by August of that year. Of those, nine had applied the rules to plant-based products — as Iowa has — rather than exclusively lab-grown meat. The list includes Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Wyoming.

In those states, legal challenges have arisen about the laws’ alleged limits on commercial free speech and about the implications for interstate commerce, with some states passing laws that prevent sales of goods produced exclusively beyond state lines.

Opponents argue the restrictions are unnecessary, risking legal trouble with little benefit for consumers.

“There’s no evidence of consumers not understanding the purposes here,” said an American Civil Liberties Union attorney to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in Missouri in 2019. “Baby oil’s not from babies, Girl Scout Cookies do not contain Girl Scouts, and nobody’s being duped by ‘Tofurky, smoked ham style.’”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com