US Government Revokes Funding Call for Military Cultivated Meat Scheme After Lobby Pressure

The US Department of Defense has withdrawn its call for funding applications to develop cultivated meat for military rations, following pressure from livestock lobby groups.

If you’ve never truly grasped the sheer power of the animal agriculture industry, buckle up.

The livestock lobby has put enough pressure on the US Department of Defense (DoD) – a body that oversees national security and the armed forces – for it to back down on efforts to make the military food system more sustainable.

The DoD has decided to revoke its call for funding proposals that would have seen small businesses and research organisations develop nutrient-dense, climate-friendly cultivated meat products for the US military.

It’s a direct result of lobbying from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), a livestock group that has backed a host of legislative efforts to restrict the progress of alternative proteins. NCBA worked with seven Congress members to get the DoD to back down, all of whom belong to the Republican party.

What the DoD project was about

It all started in May, when the DoD published its call for proposals to develop sustainable food and materials and reduce emissions related to military operations via bioindustrial manufacturing.

It was put out under public-private biomanufacturing consortium BioMade’s Sustainable Logistics for Advanced Manufacturing (SLAM) Project, with each project receiving between $500,000 and $2M. As part of the sustainable food focus, the DoD was looking for projects that would reduce the carbon footprint of food production and transportation.

“These could include, but are not limited to, production of nutrient-dense military rations via fermentation processes, utilising one-carbon molecule (C1) feedstocks for food production, and novel cell-culture methods suitable for the production of cultivated meat/protein,” the document stated.

There were a host of other focus areas, from sidestream valorisation to carbon capture tech, but the focus fell squarely on cultivated meat. Almost immediately, there was backlash.

The NCBA put out a statement condemning the move in early June. “It is outrageous that the Department of Defense is spending millions of taxpayer dollars to feed our heroes like lab rats,” its VP of government affairs, Ethan Lane, said.

“US cattle producers raise the highest-quality beef in the world, with the lowest carbon footprint – and American troops deserve to be served that same wholesome, natural meat and not ultra-processed, lab-grown protein that is cooked up in a chemical-filled bioreactor,” he added. “This misguided research project is a giant slap in the face to everyone that has served our country. Our veterans and active-duty troops deserve so much better than this.”

Conservative media runs riot on the move

The NCBA’s response was followed by a pile-on from a number of conservative media outlets. The Daily Mail called it “bizarre”, featuring comments made by a former Marine to another right-wing website, the Caller.

The Daily Signal – which was, until three days before the NCBA statement, part of the Heritage Foundation, the think tank behind the Project 2025 proposal in the US – ran an interview with the Center for Environment and Welfare. That might seem innocuous by the name, but that’s before you realise that it’s run by a long-term employee of Berman & Company, a PR group behind the Center for Organizational Research and Education (CORE).

Formerly known as the Center for Consumer Freedom, this is the same organisation that attacked Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods with a Super Bowl ad and deceptive marketing around ingredient lists. The new Center for Environment and Welfare has already run an attack ad on cultivated meat and created a website that features blatant disinformation about these proteins.

The Daily Signal interview went exactly as you’d expect – they questioned the “diversity quota” required for the DoD to “shell out cash”, compared immortalised cells to tumours, and cited a widely condemned UC Davis study to cloud over the climate impact of cultivated meat.

Hubbard also went on the Washington Free Beacon to paint soldiers as “guinea pigs” and call it a political, “anti-farmer” agenda. This was picked up by national newspapers like the Daily Express in the UK.

A cattle rancher represented by the NCBA, meanwhile, appeared on Fox News, slamming cultivated meat for being ultra-processed and countless ingredients (which isn’t the case), and purporting the naturalness of his single-ingredient meat (which isn’t the case either).

DoD gives in to pressure from cattle groups and Congress

All of this to say, the NCBA has been successful in its efforts. In a statement earlier this week, it confirmed that the DoD is now no longer pursuing cultivated meat project proposals.

“After weeks of engaging with Congress and speaking out against this plan, we are thrilled to have DoD confirmation that lab-grown protein is not on the menu for our nation’s service members,” said NCBA president Mark Eisele, a rancher from Wyoming. “These men and women make the greatest sacrifices every day in service to our country and they deserve high-quality, nutritious, and wholesome food like real beef grown by American farmers and ranchers.”

Sigrid Johannes, senior director of government affairs at the group, added: “There’s a big difference between industrial or defence applications and the food we put in our bodies. US farmers and ranchers are more than capable of meeting the military’s need for high-quality protein.”

In a sign of just how influential the association’s lobbying was, the NCBA named seven Congress members and thanked them “for quickly acting to ensure that only the most wholesome and unprocessed products end up on the plate for our servicemembers”.

These were House Representatives Don Bacon, Zach Nunn, Warren Davidson and Mary Miller, and Senators Roger Marshall, Cynthia Lummis and Deb Fischer. Davidson is currently the sponsor of a bill that looks to ban federal funding of cultivated meat, an evolution of similar bills previously proposed by Fisher and Marshall. The latter is also the sponsor of a bill looking to ban deceptive labelling practices” on plant-based meat products, which has been endorsed by the NCBA.

While it’s important not to draw partisan lines – especially since restrictive bills with bipartisan support exist too – it’s notable that all these lawmakers belong to the Republican Party. The two states that have banned cultivated meat in the US, Florida and Alabama, are also led by the GOP. And a recent survey has shown that Democrats are far more likely to have a net-positive opinion on cultivated meat than Republicans.

The DoD’s reversal comes a week after a wide-ranging report highlighted the deceptive tactics used by the animal agriculture industry to influence public policy. One prominent example was the US agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack’s ties with the dairy sector, which have helped cattle companies influence some of the biggest policies affecting the sector, like the Global Methane Pledge and the Inflation Reduction Act.

The Department of Defence did not immediately respond to Green Queen’s request for comment.