What Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller gets wrong about cultivated meat and “food freedom”

Texas’ ban on cultivated meat is framed as a defense of ranchers and consumer freedom. But federal safety approvals, real-world consumer behavior, and mounting legal scrutiny tell a more complicated story – one less about food safety than about who gets to decide what belongs on the menu

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller’s recent editorial opposing cultivated meat was written as a defense of independence. Texans, he argued, should not take orders from billionaires, bureaucrats, or judges about what belongs on their plates. Ranchers should be protected. Consumers should be spared what he described as a synthetic “science project”. Texas, he insisted, would not bow.

But the policy Miller is defending does not preserve choice. It removes it.

Texas has enacted a blanket ban on the sale of cultivated meat, preventing consumers from purchasing products that have already completed federal food safety review and are legally approved for sale elsewhere in the USA. Whatever one thinks of cultivated meat as a concept, that contradiction deserves closer examination than culture-war language allows.

A ban, not a mandate

One of the most repeated claims in Miller’s editorial is that cultivated meat companies want to 'force-feed' Texans something they do not want. It is vivid language, but it inverts what is actually happening.

Allowing a product to be sold does not compel anyone to buy it. A ban eliminates the option entirely. Texans who have no interest in cultivated meat are already free to ignore it. Texans who might want to try it, or who simply want access to it, are not.

No one is proposing replacing beef. No one is mandating dietary change. No one is restricting ranchers from raising cattle or selling meat. The only thing being restricted is the availability of an alternative product, and the restriction comes from the state itself.

If consumer freedom is the principle being defended, prohibition is an odd way to defend it.

What 'untested' actually means

Miller’s editorial repeatedly suggests that cultivated meat is unsafe or untested. That claim does not sit easily with the regulatory record.

In May 2025, the US Food and Drug Administration issued a 'no questions' letter to Wildtype, concluding that the agency had no safety concerns with the company’s cultivated salmon based on the materials submitted. The FDA reviewed Wildtype’s production process and final product and found no basis for concluding that it would be expected to result in adulterated food.

Wildtype’s salmon became the first cultivated seafood served to consumers anywhere in the world, debuting commercially at a Portland, Oregon restaurant later that month. The product is not produced in a laboratory, but in food-grade bioreactors under conditions consistent with commercial food manufacturing. In the USA, cultivated seafood falls under FDA oversight for pre-harvest review, labeling, and nutrition, just like conventional seafood.

UPSIDE Foods, which produces cultivated chicken, has similarly completed federal safety review. Both companies had secured the necessary approvals to distribute their products nationally before Texas enacted its ban in June 2025, which took effect on 1 September.

Calling these products 'untested' does not reflect the reality of the process they have undergone. It reflects a decision to disregard that process altogether.

Safety is a regulatory question, not a cultural one

This is not to say that safety questions do not exist. They do – and serious institutions have treated them as such.

In 2023, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Health Organization jointly published a detailed report examining the food safety aspects of cell-based foods. The publication did not treat cultivated meat as inherently safe or inherently dangerous. Instead, it identified potential hazards, examined how existing food safety systems apply, and outlined where regulatory attention is needed as the sector develops.

The conclusion was not that cultivated meat requires prohibition. It was that it requires regulation.

Similarly, researchers and policy groups working on cultivated meat safety have been explicit about gaps that still need to be addressed. One challenge is blending safety practices from the biopharmaceutical sector with those used in food production. Another is adapting established frameworks such as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point systems to account for new inputs or processes.

These are ordinary regulatory challenges. Food safety law exists precisely to identify hazards, establish controls, and adapt as production methods evolve. Where uncertainty exists, the response is oversight, inspection, guidance, and transparency – not blanket bans.

If safety were the true concern, Texas had many options available short of prohibition. It chose the most extreme one.

What consumers actually do when given a choice

Claims that consumers do not want cultivated meat also deserve closer scrutiny.

In June 2024, just days before Florida’s own cultivated meat ban took effect, UPSIDE Foods hosted a public tasting of its cultivated chicken in Miami. The event later became the subject of the first ethnographic study of a public cultivated meat tasting, published in a peer-reviewed journal in June 2025.

Researchers observed and interviewed attendees in a real-world setting, rather than relying on surveys or hypothetical scenarios. What they found was not uniform enthusiasm, but something more revealing: curiosity, debate, skepticism, and reflection.

Attendees came from different dietary and political backgrounds. Some were meat-eaters, some vegetarians, some self-identified conservatives. Nearly all expressed frustration with Florida’s ban. One attendee told researchers they generally supported Governor Ron DeSantis but opposed the ban, saying they would vote against it. Others argued that bans should be reserved for demonstrable health risks, not political positioning.

Reactions to the food itself were mixed. Some liked it. Others did not. Some raised ethical concerns when they learned more about production inputs. That nuance matters. It shows consumers doing exactly what markets are meant to enable: assessing information, weighing values, and making up their own minds.

The study’s most consistent finding was not that people loved cultivated meat, but that they resented being denied the choice to decide for themselves.

Courts are beginning to ask the same questions

The legal system is now testing whether these bans can be justified.

In Florida, a federal judge ruled in April 2025 that UPSIDE Foods had plausibly alleged that the state’s ban discriminated against interstate commerce in violation of the dormant Commerce Clause. The court allowed the lawsuit to proceed, noting that the law’s stated justifications would face scrutiny, particularly given public statements suggesting the ban was intended to protect local agriculture from competition.

Texas now finds itself in a similar position. In January 2026, a federal judge denied the state’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Wildtype and UPSIDE Foods, allowing a dormant commerce clause claim to move into discovery. While the judge declined to block the ban at that stage, the ruling signaled that the constitutional questions raised deserved fuller examination.

These decisions do not determine the outcome of the cases. They do, however, undercut the idea that these challenges are frivolous or driven by judicial activism. Two courts, in two states, have found it plausible that cultivated meat bans are less about safety than about shielding incumbent industries from out-of-state competition.

Markets, selectively defended

Much of the rhetoric around these bans is framed as a defense of free markets and rural livelihoods. But banning a competing product before consumers have had any meaningful opportunity to accept or reject it is not a market outcome. It is a political one.

Cultivated meat today is produced in limited volumes, at high cost, and sold only in niche settings. It does not compete with commodity beef on price, scale, or availability. If it cannot persuade consumers on taste, trust, or value, it will fail without legislative help.

Protecting an industry by outlawing potential competition is not consumer protection. It is protectionism.

Who gets to decide?

Strip away the metaphors, and the issue becomes straightforward. Should consumers be allowed to decide for themselves whether they want to purchase a federally reviewed food product? Or should the state decide that the option should not exist at all?

Texas is free to celebrate ranching. It is free to support rural economies. It is free to insist on clear labeling and transparency. What it is not free to do is ban a product solely because it conflicts with a preferred vision of what food ought to be.

That is not food freedom. It is a state-decided menu.

The broader risk

Even those skeptical of cultivated meat should be cautious about the precedent these bans set. If states can prohibit federally reviewed foods on ideological grounds, the stability of the national food system is weakened.

Innovation becomes contingent on geography rather than evidence. Investment becomes riskier not because of technology, but because of politics. Consumers lose the ability to decide what belongs on their own plates.

Cultivated meat may never become mainstream. It may remain expensive, niche, or unpopular. The market will determine that. But the question raised by Texas’ ban goes far beyond one technology.

It is whether food policy in the USA is guided by law, evidence, and consumer choice – or by political theater dressed up as protection.

Federal courts will decide the legal outcome. The rest of us should be clear about what is actually being defended, and what is being taken away.