Senators Mike Rounds and Jon Tester have introduced a bill to stop schools from serving lab-grown meat. Their plan, called the School Lunch Integrity Act of 2024, aims to make sure kids eat only traditional meat in their school lunches and breakfasts.
Tester says the bill is simple. It’s about giving kids real meat from farms, not something made in a lab. Since 2013, there’s been a lot of work on making meat in labs. But in 2023, even though the USDA said it’s okay to sell this new kind of meat, they haven’t said if it’s okay for school meals.
Rounds worries about the safety of this lab meat because not enough research has been done. Many farming groups agree with the bill. They think schools shouldn’t serve lab-grown meat until we know more about how it affects kids’ health.
Ethan Lane from a cattle group says we shouldn’t use school cafeterias to test new foods. He likes that the bill supports traditional meat, which is known to be good for kids. This debate is about how new food technology fits into what kids eat at school.
