(The Center Square) – Food manufacturers in Iowa will face fines beginning July 1 if they mislabel a protein-based product as meat.
Senate File 2391 allows the Department of Inspections, Appeals and Licensing to inspect a food manufacturer if someone complains about a food product. If DIAL determines the product is mislabeled, the manufacturer will face a fine of no less than $500 and no more than $10,000 for violations in the same transaction or occurrence, according to the bill, signed into law by Gov. Kim Reynolds on Wednesday.
“This legislation prohibits companies from exploiting the trust consumers have with our livestock producers and misleading consumers into buying products they don’t want,” Reynolds said. “This is about transparency. It’s about the common-sense idea that a product labeled chicken, beef, or pork, should actually come from an animal.”
However, the law could affect the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the Women, Infants, and Children programs. The Department of Health and Human Services will contact the United States Department of Agriculture about a waiver to exclude egg substitutes and protein-based meat products from the state’s federal program.
Democrats opposed the addition of egg substitutes in the bill.
“According to the experts at the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, as many as 2% of children are allergic to eggs,” said Rep. J.D. Scholten, D-Sioux City, during last month’s debate on the bill in the House of Representatives.
The Precision Fermentation Alliance called the law unnecessary and duplicative.
“Under current federal law, foods that do not meet an established standard of identity must be clearly labeled with appropriate qualifying terms so that consumers understand the nature of the foods they purchase,” the organization said in a statement. “SF 2391’s use of “fake” and “imitation” as the lead qualifying terms is inflammatory and disparaging to a wide category of foods that American consumers both understand and want access to. Restricting consumer choice hurts both American consumers and the industries that employ them, whether at the silo or the many food processing facilities in the Midwest and beyond.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law this month prohibiting the sale of lab-grown meat in his state. He said those who support lab-grown meat have ideologies similar to those of the World Economic Forum.
“They want to eliminate meat, they want to eliminate cattle, they want to eliminate chickens…they want to create protein in laboratories,” DeSantis said. “So essentially lab-created meat, and their goal is to get to a point where you will not be raising cattle.”