Ron DeSantis is very concerned about the meat people in Florida are putting in their mouths.
The sentient anal fistula still residing in Florida’s governor’s mansion signed a bill this week banning the production and distribution of lab-grown meat in his state. This makes Florida the first state to do so, although similar bills are under consideration in other states not renowned for their forward thinking. (Alabama, Tennessee, and Arizona.)
Partly this bill was a sop to Big Agriculture interests terrified of a future in which the world possibly won’t need or want their giant herds of methane-farting animals burning holes in the atmosphere and sucking up resources.
But partly, since DeSantis is a giant weirdo who always sounds like a paranoid black helicopter believer broadcasting on a shortwave from a nuclear fallout bunker under the Mojave, he signed the ban because otherwise mysterious global elites George Soros Agenda 21 something something:
“What we’re protecting here is the industry against acts of man, against an ideological agenda that wants to finger agriculture as the problem, that views things like raising cattle as destroying our climate.”
That’s right, Ron DeSantis won’t have any fingering on his watch.
This is not an “ideological agenda.” The reason some people view raising cattle as destroying our climate is because raising cattle contributes to destroying our climate. Large herds of animals are inefficient consumers of resources, forests get cut down so they will have a place to graze, livestock methane burping accounts for around 14 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, and on and on.
There is some debate about just how much of the decay of Earth’s ecosystems is caused by agricultural meat production. But the answer is well above the level of “not at all” that DeSantis would apparently like everyone to believe:
“So, this is really a vision of imposing restrictions on freedoms for everyday people while these elites are effectively pulling the strings, calling the shots, and doing whatever the hell they want to do in their own lives. And we’ve said in Florida, these folks like the World Economic Forum in Davos that they meet and they scheme, those policies are dead on arrival in the state of Florida,” he added.
There is a tiny, tiny shard of truth here, in that the World Economic Forum has for some years been pushing lab-grown meat as a more efficient and environmentally friendly source of food production. The WEF also is a non-governmental organization with no power to restrict the freedom of anyone on anything.
Also, Ron DeSantis is a Yale- and Harvard-educated lawyer whose predilection for private jet travel was a giant drain on the budget of his presidential campaign. But he is so incapable of interacting with other human beings without yelling at them — which is a really bad quality for a politician — that letting him loose in airports where anyone could do something horrific like try to have a conversation with him was a non-starter. But sure, those damned elites flying off to Davos with their Ivy League educations and their private jets.
PREVIOUSLY IN THIS FUCKIN GUY!
For all of DeSantis’s whining, it is not really clear that lab-grown meat is for sure an improvement environmentally. The meat is made by extracting animal cells, then feeding those cells all sorts of nutrients along the lines of what the animals themselves normally eat. According to the BBC, the end result is “genetically indistinguishable from traditionally produced meat.”
The facilities that can create this meat are so energy-intensive that, according to the BBC last year, they cancel out any environmental benefits. For example, the University of California at Davis did a study suggesting that the entire meat-growing process releases anywhere from 4 to 25 times as much carbon dioxide as traditional agriculture. And while carbon dioxide might be less potent than the methane from cow burps, it lasts much longer in the atmosphere.
There is also the issue of lab meat production at the moment rivaling AI as a terrible business bet. A scientist at UC Berkeley told the Beeb that while the companies behind growing lab meat have a nice narrative, the science and economics are nowhere near ready:
"Run the numbers, look at every scientific paper written by people who have no skin in the game, and you'll see the answer is clear.
"Can you do this, at scale, at a reasonable cost? No. Can you talk about saving the world with this? Again, no. These companies have to be honest – it's wishful thinking.”
And there is no reason we can think of why any of these companies would be immune from the same market forces that have destroyed other industries. The minute any of these companies show any promise for growth, private-equity vultures will start scooping them up and stripping them for parts like a common newspaper.
DeSantis is not taking any chances, though:
"Florida is fighting back against the global elite's plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs."
If there is any state in the nation that should be concerned with the effects global climate change will have on it, that state is Florida. Unfortunately Florida has now twice elected this dour-faced, flabby nitwit with a Superman complex. Maybe its grocery stores can sell life rafts alongside all their traditional, methane-sharting meat.
[BBC / Florida Phoenix / BBC]
Help Wonkette replace the tripe in our larders with a slightly better cut of meat.
Not since Dubya called for a ban on human-animal hybrids has there been such a compelling need to solve a problem that doesn't exist. Next, DeSantis will pass a law banning warrior robots disguised as everyday vehicles.
“What we’re protecting here is the industry against acts of man"
The industry IS an act of man, you lying dipshit.