By BRIAN PORTER | Rocky Mountain Voice
A pair of Eastern Plains lawmakers want to ensure when Coloradans eat hamburger, it was grown on the hoof and not in a lab.
House Bill 25-1064, sponsored by Rep. Ty Winter, R-Las Animas, and Sen. Rod Pelton, R-Cheyenne Wells, would prohibit the selling, manufacture or distribution of cultivated meat products.
The bill will be heard at 1:30 p.m. Monday, Jan. 27, in the House’s Agriculture, Water & Natural Resources Committee, in a session which could be lengthy. Preceding HB25-1064 on the agenda are HB25-1034 to change the dangerous dog statute in Colorado, and HB25-1074 to repeal the 2020 legislation which gave Colorado cage-free eggs. It is scheduled to be the sixth bill heard.
Winter, who represents nine counties in Southeast Colorado, serves as the assistant minority leader in the Colorado House. Pelton represents 13 counties in Southeast and East-Central Colorado. Eastern Colorado includes eight of the 10 leading agricultural counties in Colorado, with agriculture serving as a $46 billion industry for the state. The state’s leading agricultural commodities are cattle, corn and dairy, all of which are raised in Eastern Colorado. In 2022, there were 2,658,012 head of cattle and calves across 12,030 farms in Colorado.
“For generations, Colorado stock growers have raised high-quality meat products that feed families across the state and the nation,” the bill begins. “Livestock production is not just an industry in Colorado; it is a proud tradition woven into the very fabric of the state’s history.”
He’s calling for lawmakers to consider the livelihoods of ranchers in consideration of the bill.
“When we talk about heritage and we talk about [a] way of life — a lot of times rural Colorado [is] on the outs,” Winter told KKTV-TV CBS 11, “I think it’s important that we try to protect that heritage, just like we protected other heritages in this building [the Golden Dome].”
The bill defines “cultivated meat” as a food product produced from “cultured animal cells,” which is further defined as being grown in a “controlled laboratory setting”.
Crowley County cattleman Shad Sullivan says it is a free-market concern.
“Well, I have a lot of thoughts on cultivated meat, but I am at heart a capitalist and a freedom-loving American, and so I believe that every individual in America has the right to create a market as they see fit for a product that they want the consumers to be a part of,” he told KKTV-TV CBS 11.
Richard Holtorf, formerly the minority whip in the Colorado House and a Washington County cattle raiser, praises the bill.
“This is great for Colorado ranchers, those of us who have lived off the land for four or five generations, those of us who raise real, traditional beef,” he said. “Cultivated meat is just a marketing term. It’s not meat. It’s a synthetic, non-natural, Petrie-dish grown concoction maybe suitable for Mars, but not for consumption in America.”
In 2022, the Food and Drug Administration gave a green-light for safety of public consumption of one company’s cultivated meat, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture provided approval in 2023. Two companies — GOOD Meat and Upside Foods — have received the approval.
“It takes more chemicals to grow it in the laboratory than on a ranch or feedlot,” Holtorf said.