New Florida residents Jeff Bezos and his fiancée Lauren Sanchez announced a $60 million initial investment into sustainable protein, including “cultivated meats” — just before Gov. Ron DeSantis barred the sale of lab-grown meat in the Sunshine State.
DeSantis signed the legislation, called SB 1084, into effect on May 1, casting it as a bid to stop the World Economic Forum’s goal of forcing the world to eat lab-grown meat and insects, “an overlooked source of protein,” according to a news release.
Rather, “Florida is increasing meat production, and encouraging residents to continue to consume and enjoy 100% real Florida beef,” the governor’s office added.
DeSantis previously has blasted “the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals.”
The move comes about a month after the Bezos Earth Fund, chaired by the Amazon founder and Sanchez, announced a hefty investment into sustainable protein including plant-based, fermented, and cultivated meats — part of the organization’s larger, $1 billion commitment to expanding food production, Fortune earlier reported.
“We need to feed 10 billion people with healthy, sustainable food throughout this century while protecting our planet. We can do it, and it will require a ton of innovation,” Sanchez wrote in a statement announcing the $60 million investment.
Lab-grown meats differ from its slaughter-free counterparts like Impossible Foods in that they are grown from real animal cells that are replicated scientifically, eliminating the need to farm animals.
Impossible burgers and other vegan proteins such as Beyond Meat, meanwhile, are made using alternative protein sources like tempeh, tofu, seitan and beans, among other products.
According to science magazine Scientific American, the US Department of Agriculture granted its first-ever approval of cell-cultured meat produced by two companies, GOOD Meat and UPSIDE Foods, last June — less than a year after the Food and Drug Administration declared the companies’ products safe to eat.
Florida, for reference, ranks 13th in the US in overall cattle numbers with a total herd size of 886,000 among 15,000 beef producers with total sales of $546 million, according to Fortune, citing the Florida Beef Council.
Before garnering US approval, GOOD Meat had already been selling its cultivated chicken in Singapore. It made its debut in America in a dish curated by well-known chef José Andrés at his Washington, DC, restaurant, China Chilcano.
The nonprofit Good Food Institute reports that the cultivated meat industry has grown to include more than 150 companies backed by $2.6 billion in investments, Fortune cited — with Bezos among those funding the sector.
Bezos and DeSantis’s clashing opinions on the lab-grown meat industry are coming to light shortly after the 60-year-old tech billionaire moved from Seattle, near Amazon’s headquarters, to Miami, closer to his space exploration firm Blue Origin’s home base.
In October 2023, it was revealed that Bezos had purchased two mansions on Florida’s exclusive “Billionaire Bunker,” the man-made island formally known as Indian Creek Island.
Last month, he added a third multimillion-dollar estate to his sprawling Miami portfolio in an off-market transaction reportedly worth $90 million.
Sources privy to the matter revealed to The Post that Bezos intends to take up residence in this new acquisition while orchestrating the demolition of his two previous island properties — which includes a $79 million abode, and its neighboring $68 million property.
