With Trump Incoming, What Does RFK Jr Really Think About Cultivated Meat?

Robert F Kennedy Jr could well be America’s new health secretary, overseeing food safety under Donald Trump? What could it mean for cultivated meat?

In just over a week, Joe Biden will leave the White House as a largely unpopular president – however unfair that perception may be, especially given his climate legacy – passing the mantle back to perhaps the most divisive leader the US has ever had.

Donald Trump is gearing up for his second term with all guns blazing, and it has left a lot of people nervous. That includes the food industry, which could be in for a massive overhaul under the Republican administration, thanks to a former Democrat.

Trump has nominated environmentalist-turned-vaccine-sceptic Robert F Kennedy Jr as his health secretary, potentially giving him free reign over the country’s food and health systems. While his appointment is yet to be confirmed, the political dynast could have a lasting impact on how America eats.

One industry facing severe uncertainty is cultivated meat, which has already been the centre of a culture war over the last year. Over a dozen states have attempted to ban these novel foods, and two have been successful – even as some Republican Congress members fear that the US is falling behind to China’s biotech dominance, like it did in the electric vehicle race.

Rumours are swirling that RFK Jr might follow the lead of state politicians and ban cultivated meat, but what has he really said about it?

What has RFK said about cultivated meat?

Kennedy’s public statements about cultivated meat haven’t actually come directly from his mouth. Instead, he has quoted and reposted several articles critical of these proteins from Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine disinformation organisation he was chairman of until April 2023, when he took a leave of absence to run for president.

In October 2021, he shared a story that claimed cultivated meat was a money-making scheme for corporations and billionaires, quoting: “Lab-grown meat offers private corporations the opportunity to place intellectual property rights on meat development and thus create a financial windfall, at the expense of human health.”

And in November 2022, he retweeted a piece titled ‘The Fake Meat Scam’, quoting the introduction: “Using strategies to position it as a healthy alternative for natural meat, the industry’s fake meat is just another name for ultra-processed food, full of GE and pesticide-laden ingredients designed to look as much like meat as possible.”

The same week, he reposted an article questioning the safety and climate benefits of cultivated meat, reiterating a quote that said “lab-grown meat is a pipe dream”.

More broadly, RFK Jr has been very vocal against ultra-processed foods, a category cultivated meat falls under. He has pledged to remove them from school lunches, and has had a long history of promoting regeneratively farmed crops.

In April 2022, he tweeted that “fake food doesn’t address root problems of industrial food + its eco + health consequences” when resharing another article.

The same day, he said he “agreed” with the argument that governments should stop subsidising large food companies based on “dubious” and “misleading” claims. “Ultimately, we don’t just need to change products we’re eating – we need to change [sic] entire system,” the tweet read.

An uncertain future for cultivated meat in America

That last comment could be a marker of things to come. In the US, novel foods like cultivated meat are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA), which in 2023 approved the sale of cultivated chicken products from Upside Foods and Eat Just-owned Good Meat.

But with Kennedy as health secretary, the FDA faces an uncertain future. He has vowed to clear out several departments (including nutrition) within the agency, and is weighing up a rewrite to its rules on food additives. That said, despite Trump seemingly promising RFK Jr the role of USDA chief, the president-elect went with Brooke Rollins instead.

Still, if confirmed, RFK Jr will work in an administration controlled by the Republican Party, which has spearheaded the efforts to ban cultivated meat in states over the last 12 months. Florida and Alabama have successfully done so, and lawmakers in Arizona, Illinois, Kentucky, Nebraska, Iowa, Michigan, New York, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia have introduced similar measures.

Is that a harbinger of a nationwide ban under Kennedy? That much seems unlikely, according to an ally close to the conspiracy theorist, as reported by the journalist Michael Grunwald last week. He was told that Kennedy will – as is expected – likely to make things much more complicated for startups pursuing FDA approval for cultivated meat.

Already, cultivated meat has had a rough couple of years. Some startups have shut down, some have had to let go of staff, and many are financially strained. In 2022, VC funding for these startups fell by 75% to $226M – and while things seemed to be picking up again in the first half of 2023, Q3 saw only $3M plunged into this sector.

While there were some wins in the form of regulatory approvals, all of them were outside the US. That is likely to continue this year, and possibly for the next four. The US may be home to the largest number of cultivated meat innovators, but they face a great unknown.