Thread by @BruceGFriedrich

🧵 Who’s behind the cultivated meat bans? Not the meat industry, & not conservatives/libertarians. They’re calling the bans Orwellian, hypocritical, unconstitutional, and worse.

Statements/articles from: @CatoInstitute, @reason, @NRO, @thedispatch, @heritage, @RepGarbarino, @CSIS, @Meatingplace, & @MeatInstitute (reps 95% of the U.S. meat industry). 🧵⬇️

The @MeatInstitute (reps 95% of meat industry): “Decisions about what to consume or purchase should be left to the market and consumers, not dictated by legislation that hampers progress and competition.” Oh, and the bans are unconstitutional. Link: 2/x tinyurl.com/534a3ukj

Recall that @TysonFoods, ADM, @Cargill, JBS, @Nestle and most other major meat industry players are investing in cultivated meat - they don’t support these bans. Link: 3/x tinyurl.com/yn6x724y

And the award for "most outraged" goes to: @Meatingplace longtime editor Tom Johnston, who calls the bans “un-American” and “the definition of fascism.” He doesn’t like seeing his industry treated like sea turtles in need of protection: “Does beef need the armored protection of an iron-fisted government?” Link: 4/xtinyurl.com/mr2n4ypd

. @CatoInstitute's Jeffrey Singer slams “the hypocrisy of their claim to be pro-freedom” while taking away freedom and calls them “good old-fashioned protectionism.” Link: 5/x tinyurl.com/wre2yzdu

.@Reason’s @jacobsullum denounces the “bizarre, Orwellian spin” of calling the criminalization of consumer choice “freedom” and claiming to be business-friendly while criminalizing business. Link: 6/x tinyurl.com/3s5u6syy

.@CatoInstitute's @KincaidBest says politicians are attempting to “kneecap the nascent industry” and that “innovation thrives only when the fate of new technologies is determined by consumers, not lawmakers eager to shield entrenched interests from competition.” Link: 7/xtinyurl.com/2pwb5dcd

.@TheDispatch’s Nick Catoggio sums it up: “Every conservative will have the same intuition about Florida’s dumb law. If there are people willing to try lab-grown meat … and there are people willing to sell it to them, by what right does the government interfere in that transaction?” Link: 8/xtinyurl.com/4xe29c3b

.@NRO editorial calls the bans an “unlovely combination of hypocrisy and two-bit protectionism.” Link: 9/x tinyurl.com/53mucafm

Governments should not play “food police,” says @darenbakst for @Heritage about far less stringent labeling regulations. They are anti-consumer, anti-market, and “a prime example of cronyism.” Free markets should reign “without the government trying to steer consumers to buy one product over another.” Link: 10/xtinyurl.com/yc7m3puz

.@JonahDispatch says the bans are “bad for the economy [and] hypocritical for supporters of free enterprise..” Link: 11/x tinyurl.com/2mzr6e95

The libertarian legal powerhouse @IJ took action: They sued the state of Florida. Says IJ senior attorney @PaulMSherman: “This law is … about stifling innovation and protecting entrenched interests at the expense of consumer choice.” Link: 12/x tinyurl.com/yhaf3xxc

.@TheDispatch points out that if the U.S. cripples its cultivated meat industry, that “won’t stop global competitors like China from doing so, and so jobs and dollars will flow there instead.” Link: 13/xtinyurl.com/4xe29c3b

That’s the concern of Rep @GarbarinoforNY, Rep @Newhouse4Rep, and 9 other Republican members of Congress, who wrote to the directors of Homeland Security and National Intelligence stressing the importance of U.S. leadership on agricultural biotechnology, including cultivated meat, to both domestic and global food security. Link: tinyurl.com/2kfzba32 14/x

National Security think tank @CSIS agrees, saying that the U.S. should prioritize our plant-based and cultivated meat industries: for food and water security, to “establish a competitive economic advantage across future global food markets,” and to “mitigate global threats and enhance U.S. strategic competitiveness.” Link: tinyurl.com/252m2rek 15/x

Takeaway: These bans violate the most deeply held conservative and libertarian principles of free markets, consumer choice, innovation, and support for small businesses. Plus, they put the United States at a strategic disadvantage against other countries on food and water security and global economic competitiveness.

Americans deserve better. 🇺🇸 #end

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