By Howard Fischer | Capitol Media Services via Arizona Daily Sun
State lawmakers want to make sure that when a shopper asks “where’s the beef” that what they’re buying actually came from a steer or a cow.
Ditto on chickens.
On a 4-3 vote Thursday the House Committee on Land and Agriculture voted to make it illegal to call something “meat” or a “meat food product” if it is “not derived from harvested production livestock.” The same restrictions would apply to calling something chicken if it did not start as live poultry.
HB 2604, pushed by cattle rancher David Cook, R-Globe, is specifically aimed at efforts to grow actual animal protein cells in laboratories. That research is being advanced at least in part amid environmental concerns of the effects of raising cattle.
Cook said that consumers should know what they’re buying.
