HB 1057: Ban Test-Tube Meat from South Dakota for Ten Years

South Dakota passionately defends and subsidizes production of milk and meat from animals raised in confinement amidst massive leap-prone pools of sewage, but some Republican legislators want to ban a safe, clean alternative food source that is essential for sustaining life on Earth and in space (and which new research says we could make from beer-brewing waste!).

Rep. John Sjaarda (R-2/Valley Springs) fights science, capitalism, and consumer choice with House Bill 1057, a ten-year ban on the manufacture, sale, and distribution of any product containing cell-cultured protein. HB 1057 defines “cell-cultured protein” to focus on test-tube meat and avoid banning vaccines and other useful products of science:

“Cell-cultured protein,” a product that is produced for use as human food, made wholly or in part from any cell culture or DNA of a host animal, and grown or cultivated outside a live animal. Cell-cultured protein does not include proteins produced through microbial fermentation, enzymatic processing, traditional food cultures, or biotechnology processes used in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals, biologics, vaccines, dietary supplements, enzymes, or medical products, provided those products are not intended to replicate meat or animal tissue for human consumption [House Bill 1057, definition excerpted from Section 3, filed 2026.01.13].

Rep. Sjaarda copies his Big-Brotherism from Florida (which is defending its first-in-the-nation ban on test-tube meat in court), Texas, and other states run by supposedly small-government, free-market Republicans. Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Nebraska, and Montana have all enacted permanent bans. The Texas ban, if it withstands court scrutiny, lasts until September 1, 2027. Indiana’s ban runs until July 2027. These states have Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” hot air at their backs, even though you’re a lot less likely to get E. coli from meat not grown in shit, and even though cultivated meat could help make the world healthier:

Cultivated meat is expected to have numerous benefits over conventional animal agriculture by nature of its controlled and more efficient production process. Prospective life cycle assessments indicate that cultivated meat will use significantly fewer resources and can reduce agriculture-related pollution and eutrophication. One study showed that if produced using renewable energy, cultivated meat could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 92 percent and land use by up to 90 percent compared to conventional beef. Additionally, it’s expected that antibiotics will not be used in production (as of 2024, all approved products are manufactured without antibiotics) and will likely result in fewer incidences of foodborne illnesses due to the lack of exposure risk from enteric pathogens.

Over the next few decades, cultivated meat and other alternative proteins are predicted to take significant market share from the $1.7 trillion conventional meat and seafood industries. This shift could mitigate agriculture-related deforestation, biodiversity loss, antibiotic resistance, and zoonotic disease outbreaks [Elliot Swartz and Claire Bomkamp, “The Science of Cultivated Meat,” Good Food Institute, retrieved 2026.01.14].

South Dakota already requires that cell-cultured protein products be labeled as such, thanks to last year’s House Bill 1022, which passed quickly and unanimously. South Dakota also has a statute passed in 2019 that prohibits “false, deceptive, or misleading” labeling of food products as meat that don’t meet the current statutory definition, which seems to include only protein from carcasses, not test tubes. So South Dakota customers already know what they’re choosing to buy. But that’s not enough for the Republican meat fanatics, who, as in so many other realms, want to impose their choices on everyone else.

Rep. Sjaarda proposed a permanent ban on cell-cultured protein last year as well, but that measure, 2025 House Bill 1109, failed in the Senate 16–19, even after the House added a ten-year sunset clause. Rep. Sjaarda is thus starting where he left off last year, perhaps hoping that he can negotiate 2026 HB 1057 down to a Texas/Indiana two-year ban that will win majority support.

Related Reading: South Dakota also fought science last year with 2025 House Bill 1118, which the beef lobby pushed to prohibit state funding of any research, production, promotion, sale, or distribution of cell-cultured protein. 2025 HB 1118 also passed unanimously.