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Italy has banned the production of lab-grown meat in a bid to protect its powerful agricultural industry, and traditional culinary culture.
A law put forward by the right-wing government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni received final parliamentary approval on Thursday, depicting the development of cultivated meat and other non-traditional foods such as high-protein insect powder as a threat to the country’s culinary heritage.
Agriculture minister Francesco Lollobrigida called the ban a “brave measure demanded by citizens . . . that puts Italy at the vanguard of the world”.
“We are the first nation to ban it, with all due respect to the multinationals who hope to make monstrous profits by putting citizens’ jobs and health at risk,” Lollobrigida said in a Facebook post.
Coldiretti, one of Italy’s biggest farming associations, last year began campaigning for a ban on cultivated meat, which it said threatened the future of Italian farms and put the country’s food chain at risk. Its campaign secured more than 2mn signatures, and the support of 3,000 Italian local and regional governments.
“We are proud to be the first country that . . . blocks, as a precaution, the sale of food produced in laboratories whose effects on the health of consumer citizens are currently unknown,” Ettore Prandini, the Coldiretti president, wrote on Facebook on Thursday.
Italian agribusinesses had feared that future demand for cultivated meat among young Italians concerned about the environmental consequences of meat consumption could hit their bottom line.
Italy’s vast livestock industry in 2022 sold €6.3bn worth of beef products, including steak, and €8.4bn worth of pork products, according to ISMEA, a Rome-based government agency that lends money and provides technical support to Italian agribusinesses.
Under the new law, companies and restaurants will also be prohibited from using words such as “steak” or “salami” to describe plant-based products.
“Words like ‘tofu steak’ or ‘veg prosciutto’ . . . reveal an inappropriate phenomenon of using labels traditionally associated with meat to sell products with vegetable protein,” the bill reads.
“Synthetic food represents a dangerous means of destroying every link with natural food and different lands by cancelling every cultural distinction, often thousands of years old.”
Not all Italians were happy with the decision, with members of the small Italian libertarian opposition party Più Europa holding up signs in front of the parliament, accusing the Coldiretti president of “cultivating ignorance” and shouting “shame, shame”.
“Coldiretti . . . has distorted this debate for their direct economic interests,” said Benedetto Della Vedova, Più Europa president.
Environmental groups also expressed dismay at the Italian ban.
Francesca Gallelli from plant-based advocacy group the Good Food Institute Europe told the Financial Times that the move would hinder the fight against climate change. Cultivated meat allowed people “to eat what they love” with fewer emissions, she said. While investors poured money into this sector in other European countries, she added, Italy today had “shut the door on these opportunities”.
Additional reporting by Susannah Savage
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