Support the PROTEIN Act

By Jon Hochschartner 

I was excited to learn Democratic Senator Adam Schiff has introduced a bill, the Producing Real Opportunities for Technology and Entrepreneurs Investing in Nutrition (PROTEIN) Act, which would allocate more than $500 million toward the research and development of alternative proteins, including cultivated meat. For those who don’t know, cultivated meat is grown from livestock cells, without killing. It offers a number of potential animal welfare, public health and environmental benefits over slaughtered options.

“Right now in America, it seems all anyone can talk about is protein, but the exploding demand for it is not something our current food system will be able to meet,” Schiff said. “Investing in protein innovation, which is already supporting thousands of jobs in California and across the U.S., will help us meet those needs while investing in a climate-friendly food system and positioning the U.S. as a global leader in a growing market that will create new revenue opportunities for American producers.”

Among other things, the act would establish three research centers of excellence for alternative protein innovation, launch a new United States Department of Agriculture research program on protein security, create a food biomanufacturing grant program, set up a bioworkforce development grant program, and direct the aforementioned department to form a national strategy on protein diversification. Democratic Representative Julia Brownley introduced a companion bill in the House.

“Protein innovation is an emerging but essential pillar of the U.S. bioeconomy that is critical to strengthening food security and addressing the climate crisis,” Brownley said. “While the United States has driven important breakthroughs in this field, countries like China and Canada are outpacing our investments in this cutting-edge technology. As global demand for meat continues to grow, we must diversify our protein sources to strengthen domestic supply chains and expand choices for American consumers.”

I am particularly enthusiastic about the money being invested in cultivated-meat research. Even low adoption rates of the protein amongst existing omnivores would save countless animals from brief, hellish lives on factory farms. In my view, there is no greater, preventable suffering and mass death than that we inflict on our fellow creatures in the name of food production. While some technological hurdles still block the commercialization of cultivated meat, these can be overcome with further study.

David Block, director of the Integrative Center for Alternative Meat and Protein at the University of California, Davis, made this point. “This bill will help close the gap between promising breakthroughs and real-world deployment in U.S. communities,” he said. “Growth and commercialization will be dependent on establishing a vibrant research ecosystem solving the industry’s commercialization hurdles, a highly trained workforce, and a network of infrastructure-rich centers for scale up.”

Unfortunately, I’m not optimistic the PROTEIN Act will pass under a Republican-controlled legislature and executive branch. On the whole, the party has proven itself to be opposed to cellular agriculture, banning cultivated meat at the state level before the product even reaches supermarket shelves. My more realistic hope is Schiff’s and Brownley’s bill will pass when Democrats next retake Congress and the White House. If opinion polls are to believed, this could be sooner rather than later.

Jon Hochschartner lives in Connecticut. He is the author of a number of books, including The Animals’ Freedom Fighter: A Biography of Ronnie Lee, Founder of the Animal Liberation Front. Visit his blog at SlaughterFreeAmerica.Substack.com.