Lab-Grown Meat Meets The Supremacy Clause: 11th Circuit Weighs In On Federal Pre-Emption

Can a state state ban a product that the federal government has affirmatively approved for sale? In Upside Foods, Inc. v. Commissioner, Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, No. 24-13640 (11th Cir. Mar. 23, 2026), the Eleventh Circuit answered yes, holding that Florida’s ban on lab-grown meat is not expressly pre-empted by the federal Poultry Products Inspection Act (“PPIA”). The ruling reinforces a growing consensus among the circuits that a pure product ban is fundamentally different from a regulation of how a federally inspected facility operates, and it carries significant implications for food-technology companies, state regulators, and practitioners alike.

The Parties and Background

Upside Foods, Inc. produces lab-grown chicken by banking embryonic chicken cells, placing them in a “cultivator,” and supplying them with nutrients to form a product that, according to the company’s CEO, “looks, cooks, and tastes, like a conventional boneless, skinless chicken cutlet.” Upside has completed a pre-market consultation with the FDA and received a Grant of Inspection from the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, making it an “official establishment” subject to the PPIA and authorized to sell its product interstate commerce.

The defendants are the Commissioner of Florida’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and several Florida State Attorneys. The dispute arose from Florida’s SB 1084, which makes it “unlawful for any person to manufacture for sale, sell, hold or offer for sale, or distribute cultivated meat” in the state, with criminal and civil penalties for violators. Upside challenged the law as expressly pre-empted by the PPIA and moved for a preliminary injunction.

Upside’s Pre-Emption Claims

Upside’s complaint rested on the PPIA’s two express pre-emption provisions. The “Ingredients Provision” pre-empts state laws that impose additional or different “ingredient requirements . . . with respect to articles prepared at any official establishment”. The “Facilities Provision” pre-empts state laws that impose additional or different requirements “with respect to premises, facilities and operations of any official establishment.” Upside argued that SB 1084 functioned as both an impermissible ingredient requirement and an impermissible regulation of its facilities and operations, because a ban on its product was effectively a ban on a specific production method that could force its facilities to close. After disposing of two threshold issues, the court reached the merits of the pre-emption claims and affirmed the lower court’s denial of injunctive relief.

The Facilities Provision

Writing for a unanimous panel, Judge Brasher concluded that a pure product ban like SB 1084 does not regulate the premises, facilities, or operations of any official establishment. The central distinction driving the court’s reasoning is between laws that tell a facility how to operate and laws that simply prohibit a product from being made or sold.

The court anchored the Facilities Provision’s three key terms—premises, facilities, and operations—to the physical, onsite activities of a poultry processing plant, applying the canon noscitur a sociis to prevent the broader term “operations” from expanding beyond its narrower neighbors. It further required a direct relationship between the state law and those onsite activities, noting that a looser reading would make the three terms redundant and would swallow the PPIA’s savings clause, which preserves state authority over other matters regulated under the statute. Fifth and Seventh Circuit cases reinforced this reading, upholding state horsemeat bans on the ground that prohibiting a product is not the same as regulating how a slaughterhouse operates.

The court’s distinction came into sharpest focus when it addressed National Meat Association v. Harris, 565 U.S. 452 (2012). In Harris, the pre-empted California law directed slaughterhouses to handle non-ambulatory pigs in specific ways, effectively commanding facilities to restructure their onsite operations. SB 1084 does nothing of the sort—it does not prescribe cell-harvesting methods, cultivator materials, or waste-disposal procedures, but instead categorically prohibits the end product. That difference, the court held, places SB 1084 outside the Facilities Provision’s reach.

The Ingredients Provision

The court applied the same product-ban-versus-operations-rule distinction to the Ingredients Provision. It concluded that an ingredient requirement is a rule specifying what must go into a product—not a categorical ban on the product itself. Upside had recast SB 1084 as targeting the “ingredient” of lab-grown cells, but the court found that framing inconsistent with how both ordinary usage and the PPIA itself treat ingredients, which are items like preservatives, spices, and coloring agents rather than a product’s underlying cellular composition. Other circuits again supported the holding: both the Ninth Circuit (foie gras) and the Fifth Circuit (horsemeat) have held that an outright product ban is not the kind of ingredient requirement the statute pre-empts.

Takeaways

The Eleventh Circuit’s decision in Upside Foods draws a clear line between state laws that regulate how a federally inspected facility operates—which the PPIA pre-empts—and state laws that ban a category of product outright, which it does not. For the growing cultivated-meat industry, the ruling means that federal inspection and approval do not, by themselves, guarantee market access in every state. For state legislators, the opinion provides a roadmap: a flat product ban is more likely to survive pre-emption scrutiny than a law that dictates specific production methods or facility requirements. Practitioners should watch for whether Upside seeks rehearing en banc or files a petition for certiorari.

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