Would you eat cultivated meat? Colorado representative looking to prevent this meat from making it to the state

PUEBLO, Colo. (KKTV) - Ty Winter, Assistant Minority Leader of the House Republicans, House District 47, is looking to pass a bill which would prohibit anyone from selling or distributing cultivated meat in Colorado.

However, representatives from the cultivated meat industry say this would be a big disappointment and prevent people from trying what they say is an innovative and delicious product.

Winter tells 11 News, “I mean recently, with what cattle ranchers are going through, first and foremost, I mean, it cost more and more, and harder and harder times to make a living.”

But Suzi Gerber the Executive Director of the Association for Meat, Poultry and Seafood Innovation says, “I think that the world is better off with cattle ranchers doing what they’ve done for hundreds of years and with innovations moving forward and us being side-by-side we are not enemies in fact, most of the major investors in cultivated meat are meat producers, so we are not enemies.

Gerber continues saying, “We are absolutely complementary working towards the same goal, which is feeding people what they want to eat.”

However, Winter also says about cattle ranchers, “They have to compete with those things and the last thing that they should have to compete with is one other entity that is trying to undercut not only their ability to provide a good protein source to not only Coloradans and Americans but the most important thing about it is it’s our heritage and it’s our western way of life and it’s woven into the fabric of Colorado.”

Winter continues saying, “And I think when we talk about heritage and we talk about way of life that a lot of times rural Colorado’s on the outs and I think it’s important that we try to protect that heritage just like we protected other heritages in this building.

“... And I think that we you know we have a great history and tradition of doing this. It would be one thing if we didn’t have these protein sources but with such viable protein sources to me it just makes no sense that our farmers and ranchers should have to compete with something so unnatural.”

Gerber also says, “We in the cultivated meat industry have nothing but utmost amounts of respect for American farmers, and we would encourage as many communications with them as possible and as many collaborations with them as possible.”

11 News spoke with cattle farmers about the concept of cultivated meat and one cattle rancher who has cattle in Crowley County, Colorado and in Texas, Shad Sullivan says, “Well, I have a lot of thoughts on cultivated meat, but I am at heart a capitalist and a freedom loving American and so I believe that every individual in America has the right to create a market as they see fit for a product that they want the consumers to be a part of.”

Sullivan continues saying, “So I don’t disregard those people that want to create this new product that would compete with the real product which is beef ultimately, but there comes a point where we have to say OK what is the truth about this product and what is not the truth and so therein, the labeling becomes extremely extremely important.

“Just at the very base of it what are these cultivated meat made of, made from, how are they produced and how safe is it for the consumer?”

Similarly, Gerber says she feels there are a lot of misconceptions when it comes to cultivated meat and explains, “It’s a misguided way of controlling the market.

“I think you know the United States has a very long history of allowing consumers to decide what they want to eat, how they want to feed themselves, how they want to feed their families and I think that’s really important that we keep that in mind when going forward that these are FDA regulated products, they are safe, they are tested.

“They are rigorously regulated, inspected by the USDA like any other meat product and ultimately it should be the consumers who decide and I think Colorado individuals and Colorado businesses and the Colorado state economy really benefits from this sector.”

Ensuring his stance on cultivated meat is clear, Sullivan elaborates, “Just to get to the ground level there’s nothing more wholesome then USA beef.

“There’s only one product in the USA beef and that is beef and so of course I lean that way in positivity and support and I’m a rancher at heart.

“That’s how I’ve made my living my whole life and so I go around the nation promoting USA beef and I think it’s very important.

“I am not against other people creating a product. That is what the Constitution of the United States of America allows us to do. If they can find a market for it fine, but let’s make sure it’s labeled properly and correctly so we’re not misleading the consumer.”

On the other hand, Mike Callicrate, a cattle rancher who raises his cattle in St. Francis, Kansas and has his company Ranch Food Direct in Colorado Springs says, “I think that cultivated meat is sort of a reaction that you might expect from folks who love technology, you know, they think that the answer to every problem is just more technology.”

Callicrate continues saying, “I think the lab grown meat is just another extension of pushing technology and packing of our food and it’s absolutely not better for the environment.

“If you take a production system like mine for example, you know our cows eat grass, we feed the cattle finely based rations, which doesn’t require the draining of the Ogallala aquifer like the GMO corn and soy does through irrigation, our whole foods system or whole production system is within a region, so we ranch in St. Francis, Kansas, we haul it into Colorado Springs, we don’t hold the animal anywhere. We slaughter the animal on site.

“The slaughter waste stays behind, it gets composted into soil nutrients. We’re building soil, you’ll never do that with lab grown meat and you think about what really needs to happen is we don’t need fewer cows we need twice as many cows, three times as many cows as we have now but produced in a way that’s friendly to the environment, one that builds soil health, one that sequesters carbon.

“I think lab grown meat is a really bad idea. It’s heavy, it has heavy use of antibiotics and chemicals and because lab grown meat doesn’t have an immune system, how does it control pathogens? Well, you do it with antibiotics, you do it with chemicals.

“It not only is ultra-processed, but it uses everything ultra-processed to produce it.”

Gerber’s response to their cultivated meat using antibiotics is, “In fact, the vast majority of antibiotics in the world are used for cattle in sort of intensive farming feedlots currently.

“So in order for cell cultivated meat to grow it has to be grown in a sterile environment in the first place, it’s not going to get exposed pathogens.

”These things are heavily screened before they are ever put in and in fact, the process simply will not continue to replicate if there are other things competing.

“So, in short, our industry does not use antibiotics whatsoever, whereas they are common place in many forms of traditional animal agriculture currently in the United States.”

For those who don’t understand how cultivated meat works, Gerber explains, “You take a sample of a cell, so in this case it could be chicken, it could be fish, it could be beef, it could be duck, it could be you name it. We take a sample of it-in fact, there are companies that are using the same cell cultivation technology to do things like cocoa and coffee and any plant cells so it’s a plant or animal cell-and you take a sample of it and then you do exactly what you would do in any other sort of either biological setting or a scientific setting and you allow it to grow.

“So you take a sample of something and you give it exactly what it always needs, the nutrients that it always needs.

“So, just like we take beef, we make beef jerky, we make steak, we make burgers, same thing.

“You would harvest it. It’s going to grow in environments that are quite a bit like the way that dairy is fermented or that breweries operate in these kind of very safe and clean food facilities. So, they’re made in these food facilities until they’re harvested and then they’re combined into the foods that you would normally expect to eat also in food facilities and then they come, hopefully, someday soon to restaurants or grocery stores.”

Gerber tells 11 News, “Aside from being endlessly cool, I mean, it’s really just a very fascinating thing that humans are capable of doing amazing things when the smartest minds of the worlds come together.”

“It’s an incredibly efficient way to make exactly the food that we want to in the most streamlined possible way,” says Gerber.

Gerber also mentions, “Regions of the world, for example, that are deserts could have things that, you wouldn’t be able to breed animals in the desert because there’s nothing for them to graze on.

“If there are places that are otherwise, you know, there aren’t enough facilities there aren’t enough ways to produce in traditional methods, this opens up all of these possibilities.

“As the global population increases and specifically as peoples' appetite for meat increases, we are running into a bunch of obstacles in terms of resources, like enough land, enough clean drinking water, all of these resource limitations. At some point, they sort of get factored together and cultivated meat is another way in combination with all of the other extent ways of making food it’s just one more way to make sure that we’re able to feed people what they want to eat as efficiently as possible.”

In regards to how cattle ranchers will be impacted, Gerber also says, “My genuine belief is that it would probably be more beneficial than anything to our very respected farmers in the United States.”

But Callicrate believes our bodies may not be able to recognize this type of food and he tells 11 News, “Getting back to the whole foods that feed us and our bodies can recognize, so I want to get away from patented food, I want to get away from any kind of a DNA manipulation in our food system and I want something that’s truly nutritious, as opposed to some factory, somewhere replacing these really important stewards of our land these men of our live stock with fake meat with lab grown meat.”

Gerber also tells 11 News, “lab grown meat,” is not the correct terminology for cultivated meat.

Callicrate also says, “I think we’ve got to really consider a better way of producing livestock than we’re currently doing.

“Which we’ve created that model through Ranch Foods Direct and the way Callicrate Cattle Company produces animals, so it’s not something we can’t do it’s something we’ve always done until about the last 30 years when the big meat packers came in and wiped out half of our ranchers and 85,000 of our really good independent family feedlots.”

Furthermore, Sullivan mentions, “If people really knew how much beef was dove into their daily lives they would be surprised.

“I mean, we use beef in charcoal, for our ball bearings. We use beef in makeup, we use tallow in beauty products. We make leather belts and everybody uses beef in one way or another so some of them just don’t know it.

“I think that it’s very important to to know and to respect what we do with the animal.”

As for people who say cultivated meat prevents having to kill an animal to get the product, Sullivan says, “That sacrifice is not pretty, but it’s necessary for life on Earth and so that’s what we do, and we do it in the most humane and the most efficient way and manner of anybody on Earth right here in America.”

As for if Colorado would pass Winter’s bill to prohibit cultivated meat in the state, Gerber tells 11 News, “I think it would be a really big shame if Colorado banned these foods for a couple of reasons.

“Number one I think Colorado is a priority state for cultivated meat companies to come in and create jobs that would be manufacturing jobs, that would be food packing jobs, that would be distribution jobs, that would be you name it Colorado’s high on the list.

“I also think that agricultural producers in Colorado are likely to benefit financially from this industry buying the products that they already make in substantial amounts.

”So aside from those major economic impacts to Colorado, specific other states would be similar obstacles as well, but I think Colorado is a very high priority state in that regard."

Winter’s bill is in the pre-bill filing currently, if it makes it out of the Agricultural Committee it will then go to