From yahoo.com

Cultivated chicken being prepared in Miami at Upside Foods “Freedom of Food” pop-up event on June 27, 2024. (Photo credit: Upside Foods)

Quality Journalism for Critical Times

The U.S. Department of Agriculture approved the sale of cell-cultured chicken by two companies a little more than a year ago, giving the seal of approval for those businesses to sell lab grown meat to Americans.

But now if you sell, manufacture, or distribute cultivated meat in Florida, you would be breaking the law and, if found guilty, could face 60 days in jail and a fine of up to $500.

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the law (SB 1084) on May 1 and it went into effect on Monday, making the Sunshine State the first in the nation to ban lab-grown meat (Alabama became the second state to do so later in May, but its law won’t go into effect until October).

Saying that his motivation was to protect Florida consumers, Tampa Republican state Sen. Jay Collins sponsored the bill during the 2024 legislative session in conjunction with the Florida Department of Agriculture.

“There are many concerns right here and, until we have those studies and there’s proof positive that this process is going to work, we want to ban this in the state of Florida because it’s just not there quite yet,” Collins told the Senate Appropriations Committee on Agriculture, Environment, and General Government in February.

Cultivated meat is animal meat (including seafood and organ meats) produced by growing animal cells directly. This eliminates the need to raise animals for food. According to the Good Food Institute, cultivated meat is made of the same cell types that can be arranged in the same or similar structure as animal tissues, thus replicating the sensory and nutritional profiles of conventional meat.

Last Thursday night, Upside Foods, one of two companies allowed by the USDA to sell cultivated meat, held a “Freedom of Food” pop-up event in Miami’s Wynwood District that featured chef and television personality Mika Leon preparing tostadas featuring Upside cultivated chicken.

“Having had the opportunity to work with Upside’s cultivated chicken, I can attest that their products are delicious,” Leon said Monday in a press release issued the company. “From appearance to aroma and taste, their products provide the same experience you’d expect from chicken. As a chef, I love the idea of preserving the foods we love while using innovation to figure out ways to create a better future of food.”

“We believe that cultivated meat is essential for the future of food, and people should have the right to choose what they eat,” added Dr. Uma Valeti, CEO and founder of Upside Foods.

“The purpose of this event was to give Floridians a taste of cultivated meat — something the state is unfortunately preventing them from enjoying and benefiting from, both in terms of innovation and economics. Despite Florida’s ban, events like this highlight the increasing interest in cultivated meat and its crucial role in shaping a more sustainable future of food.”

The other company able to sell cultivated meat in the U.S., GOOD Meat, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company did issue a blistering statement in May shortly after DeSantis signed the bill into law.

Dictating to consumers

“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,” the company said. “This bill sends a terrible message to the investors, scientists, and entrepreneurs that have built America’s global leadership in alternative proteins.”

GOOD Meat went on to assail Florida lawmakers for presenting “no credible safety concerns,” saying the law was designed explicitly to help “Big Ag” “avoid accountability and competition.”

When he signed the legislation in May, DeSantis called the development of cultivated meat over the past decade an effort with an “ideological agenda that wants to finger agriculture as the problem.”

“The bill that I’m going to sign today is going to say, basically, take your fake, lab-grown meat elsewhere. We’re not doing that in the state of Florida,” he said.

The law says that a person who knowingly violates the ban on selling, holding, offering for sale, or distributing cultivated meat commits a misdemeanor of the second degree. Florida law says that such misdemeanors are punishable by a jail term of 60 days and a fine of up to $500.

Italy became the first country in the world to ban the production, sale or import of cultivated meat last November.

The post Selling lab-grown meat in Florida could now get you jailedappeared first on Florida Phoenix.

HALLELUJAH!!

From zerohedge.com

As the war in Gaza continues, Western governments are pursuing increasingly disturbing avenues of eradicating ideas and speech that challenge pro-Israel narratives. In the latest demonstration of such an over-the-top policy, German law now requires applicants for citizenship to affirm that the State of Israel has a “right to exist.”  

“New test questions have been added on the topics of antisemitism, the right of the State of Israel to exist and Jewish life in Germany,” the interior ministry told the Financial Times. The new law took effect on Thursday. Two days earlier, interior minister Nancy Faeser said:  

“Anyone who shares our values and makes an effort can now get a German passport more quickly and no longer has to give up part of their identity by giving up their old nationality. But we have also made it just as clear: anyone who does not share our values ​​cannot get a German passport. We have drawn a crystal-clear red line here and made the law much stricter than before.”

Somehow, “sharing German values” now includes embracing a very specific political stance about a single foreign country that’s 1,900 miles away.

Whatever your opinion about Israel, the idea that any country on Earth has a “right to exist” is profoundly problematic. “After all, what is a country — or, in more precise terminology, a state — other than a political arrangement?” asked Brian McGlinchey at Stark Realities. “And why would any political arrangement be deemed as having ‘rights,’ much less a supposed right to never be altered or cancelled?” 

In March, Germany weekly Der Spiegel reported that the applicants for German citizenship would also have to memorize the year of Israel’s founding and Germany’s punishments for denying the Holocaust. 

The German government said its new requirements are necessary to counter a claimed spike in antisemitic incidents. As the Times reports, “Antisemitic incidents logged by [Germany’s commissioner for fighting antisemitism] increased 83 per cent, year on year, in 2023 to 4,782.” 

In an elaboration that should give readers pause, the Times further notes that “the vast majority” of the claimed incidents were “acts of publicly documented hate speech.” Note that, in 2017, Germany officially adopted the controversially-expansive definition of antisemitism promoted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Among that definition‘s examples: “claiming that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” — in other words, the supposed “right” of the State of Israel to exist.

Put it all together, and Germany’s surging count of “antisemitic incidents” in 2023 is doubtlessly driven in large part by mere political speech, made in response to the Gaza war, that include any demands for a new political order in what is now Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, or assertions that the State of Israeli is a racist undertaking. Every sign, sticker and speech that says “Zionism is Racism” or “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” can therefore be counted as an “antisemitic incident.” (Of course, that’s not to deny there are bona fide antisemitic incidents in the totals.)

Germany’s new requirement that prospective citizens affirm the State of Israel’s “right to exist” is just the latest of many examples of thought-policing by Western governments on that country’s behalf.