Rounds, RFK, Jr., on FDA Oversight of Lab Meat
WASHINGTON, D.C., April 28, 2026 – With the Trump administration’s commitment and concentration on ‘real food’, South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds asked about oversight of so-called fake meat products. Rounds, a Republican senator, said he is concerned with lab-grown cells, or cell-cultivated products, attempting to enter the US food system posing as meat. One example of these experiments takes pork fat cells grown in a lab and combines them with plant protein. This product is sold to consumers at the grocery store as a “meatball.” Rounds questioned Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on lab-grown “meat” products.
Secretary Kennedy, in a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Labor, HHS, Education and Related Agencies, pledged to exercise HHS’s oversight of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in regulating fake “meat” products.
“I share your concern, Senator,” Kennedy said. “I probably have amplified concern. We’re going to exercise FDA’s oversight of them. They’re going to have to show us, they’re going to have to get through a lot of skepticism to show that they’re safe.”
A 2019 agreement between the FDA and USDA split oversight of lab meat products but labeling is where the rules really get confusing. Two dozen state legislatures have considered bans, and Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Montana, Indiana, Nebraska, and Texas have enacted bans. Other states concentrate on labeling or procurement restrictions or the restriction of cell cultured products in schools.
In Rounds’ home state of South Dakota, a law is on the books that restricts the use of state moneys for research, production, promotion, or sale/distribution of cell-cultured protein. Their neighbor to the south, Nebraska, has an executive order signed by the governor banning any state government actor from purchasing cell-cultured meat. Many of the state level labeling laws invoke First Amendment questions and have been challenged.
Source: Western Ag Network
