Lab-grown meat threatens Italian culture — Meloni minister

ROME — Novel foods such as laboratory-produced “meats” risk undermining Italian culture, identity and civilization, Italy’s minister for food sovereignty and agriculture, Francesco Lollobrigida, warned on Thursday. 

Speaking to POLITICO as the Italian parliament passed Europe’s first legislation banning lab-cultured meat, Lollobrigida said the measures were about “defending work, environment, culture and identity — which are rooted in food quality,” and that they were intended to “defend our civilization against a model driven by delocalization and long supply chains.”

The right-wing government led by Giorgia Meloni has seized on novel foods to open a new front in the culture wars.

For Lollobrigida, cultured meat production is an existential threat to traditional meat farming and to a rural way of life lived in harmony with the land: “If you produce a food that has no relationship to man, land, work, you can move production to a place with lower taxes and less environmental standards, hurting jobs and the environment.”

The opposition has criticized the measures as “ideological propaganda” consistent with the hostility that Meloni’s party toward globalization and modernity, and its defense of a sometimes imagined traditional lifestyle and values.

Since coming to power a year ago as Italy’s first minister for food sovereignty, Lollobrigida, who is Meloni’s brother-in law, has introduced a raft of patriotic measures defending Italian culture and culinary heritage.

In March the minister introduced measures requiring clear labeling and health warnings for flour derived from insects such as crickets and mealworm larvae. Insect flour, which is packed with vitamins, proteins and minerals, has been authorised by the EU.  

Lollobrigida said he was “not against insects … but for transparency. We guaranteed that citizens know if there is a scorpion or larva in their flour.”

Invasive species

Lollobrigida set his sights this summer on a foreign invasive species, the Atlantic blue crab, which is threatening Italian native clams and mussels. He shared an image of Meloni and a dish of crabs on a family holiday to persuade people to eat their way out of the crab crisis.  

Italy has always been a staunch defender of its culinary heritage, and has more products with a protected Protected Designation of Origin (such as Parmigiano Reggiano) than any other country.

But for Lollobrigida, food sovereignty is not about protecting farmers but “the defense of a system that must be free to decide what to produce and what to eat.” Food sovereignty is a movement based on the right to consume food that is culturally fitting, as well as on local self-determination in food systems and support for traditional knowledge, rejecting technologies such as GM crops and synthetic pesticides.

The conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have demonstrated that strategic autonomy on food is critical, Lollobrigida said, as the reliance on long supply chains for energy, fertilizers and food have “left us at the whim of criminals and autocrats who can blackmail us on energy and fertilizers, and in the future could blackmail us on food.”

The lower house of parliament on Thursday approved Lollobrigida’s bill banning the production and sale of synthetic meats.

The Italian Complementary Protein Alliance, a group representing companies and researchers with expertise in plant-based and cultivated meat proteins, said the bill “tells Italians what they can and can’t eat, stifles innovation and likely violates EU law … Once famous for world changing innovations such as microchips and ground breaking fashions, Italian politicians are now choosing to go backwards while the world moves forwards.”

Ettore Prandini, the leader of farmers’ association Coldiretti, said: “Italy which is the world leader in food quality and safety, has the duty to lead the way in policies to protect citizens’ health,” adding “the battle now moves to Europe.”

Commentators have pointed out that Italy might not be able to oppose the sale of synthetic meat produced within the European Union, where the common single market allows the free movement of goods and services.

Lollobrigida responded that he did not expect problems from the EU, which “holds the principle that the identity of peoples must be preserved.”