Missouri Fake Meat Debate Won't Be Settled In November

ST. LOUIS, MO — Science is on the ballot in Missouri and across the country in the November 6 midterm election, but there are some issues you won't be able to check a box for or against. Take climate change. You won’t see referendums on its cause or what to do about it, but natural and environmental disasters like the California wildfires and hurricanes ravaging the Atlantic and Gulf coasts raise the stakes dramatically.

“This is the most important election of our lifetime,” Bill Holland, the New Mexico policy director for the League of Conservation voters, told Popular Science, which put together an inventory of the top scientific, environmental and technological challenges by state.

(Be sure to check out Patch's 2018 Midterm Voter Guide for more information on the races in front of Missouri voters this November.)

Governors are on the ballot in 36 of 50 states, and all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 seats in the 100-member Senate will also be decided. Popular Science said candidates are actively campaigning on some issues, like opioids and fossil fuels, but silent on others. Still, regardless of the outcomes of the individual races, Congress and state legislatures will have to confront them, magazine said.

In Missouri, Popular Science said the fake meat debate is the state's biggest technological challenge.

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In May, the state legislature passed a bill cracking down on fake meat, and Missouri became the first state in the nation to define meat as coming exclusively from animals.

Proponents say the law will protect Missouri's farmers and ranchers from, well, other farmers and ranchers — those growing soy beans, wheat or other vegetables that can be passed off as protein — in addition to mad scientists and their lab-grown meats.

The fake meat industry has grown 24 percent in just the past two years, according to Popular Science. So-called "clean meat" that is grown from cell cultures rather than taken from slaughtered animals has promised to "revolutionize the global food system," according to the Good Food Institute, a leading proponent of the technology.

They say it's cheaper, more sustainable, and cleaner — carrying no risk of E. coli, salmonella or other bugs and not requiring the use of antibiotics — than traditional meat production, which is a leading contributor to climate change.

"Backed by the Missouri Cattlemen’s Association and pork producers, the bill could stifle growth of a new industry," Popular Science writes. "Columbia-based Beyond Meat, for instance, could likely have to change its name, and warns that the measure could result in job loss."

Turtle Island Foods, the company that makes Tofurky — the staple of many a vegan Thanksgiving — is suing the state in conjunction with the Good Food Institute and animal rights groups. They say the law violates their First Amendment rights.

"Americans don't like censorship, and they don't like the government picking winners and losers in the marketplace," Good Food executive director Bruce Friedrich told the Post-Dispatch, calling the law "unconstitutional."

Water quality is another issue plaguing states across the country. States in the Chesapeake Bay watershed have been asked by the EPA to submit specific nitrogen-reduction plans. In Iowa, farm runoff contributes to the massive algae blooms in the Gulf of Mexico — called the “dead zone” — that chokes off oxygen to marine life, threatening that region’s seafood industry. Farm pollution is also a big issue in Arkansas, which has suspended permits for new concentrated animal feeding operations amid fears of water pollution due to the state’s density of CAFOs.

The water crisis in Flint, where 100,000 residents were exposed to dangerous levels of lead after a swtich in the city’s water source, is a big issue in the Michigan governor’s race. And in Kansas, where an investigation by the Wichita Eagle newspaper found that hundreds of residents of the Sunflower State drank and bathed in water tainted with dry-cleaning chemicals, voters are pressuring elected officials to rescind legislation that directed regulators to stop looking for contamination and “make every reasonable effort” to keep sites off the EPA Superfund list.

Oil and gas drilling threaten the caribou of Alaska and Delaware’s tourism industry. Oklahoma has seen a whopping 13,000 percent increase in earthquakes over the past decade, an uptick that corresponds with expansion of oil and gas exploration, especially fracking. Pennsylvania, which sits on the richest natural-gas deposits east of the Mississippi River, is also trying to figure out what to do about fracking.

Infrastructure, access to the internet and climate change — especially in coastal states threatened by rising sea levels — are issues in many states. And in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, residents are steeling themselves for the next storm as they struggle to recover from the the pummeling they took during the 2017 hurricane season. The local Climate Change Council says the island is unprepared for intensifying storms, droughts and what could be a 2-foot rise in the sea level.

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