Ranchers Rejoice! He wears the hat; he’s worked cattle on the prairie. He’s known for plain talk and decisive action. He’s in Pierre to represent *you*: the rancher, the cowboy, the cattleman…

That’s been the message from Governor Larry Rhoden’s Campaign this year as he seeks reelection. That he’s one of us, and will always have our backs. Very recently, this message was put to the test. 

Enter HB 1077, “An Act to consider a cultivated-protein food product to be adulterated food”.

HB1077, aka “The Lab Grown Meat Ban,” would have effectively made any lab-grown meat illegal in South Dakota. Sponsored primarily by Representative Julie Auch of Yankton, District 18: HB1077 sailed through the South Dakota House and then narrowly passed through the South Dakota Senate. Opponents of the bill (those who want to see South Dakota store shelves full of steaks grown like fungus under laboratory lights) thought it was game over when it went to the desk of South Dakota’s Cowboy Governor, and former Union Center area rancher Larry Rhoden. However, in a move that shocked many of his supporters and opponents alike, Governor Larry Rhoden vetoed the bill, keeping Lab Grown Meat safe in South Dakota, citing his concerns about the free market. I spoke with several legislators in the House and Senate, who claim his real motivation had nothing to do with free-market concerns and everything to do with not wanting South Dakota to be sued by the same groups that have already filed lawsuits against other braver States for banning lab-grown meat. We’ve always been a fiscally responsible State, and I believe that if we’re sticking up for South Dakota Ag Producers, we can afford to have a little bit of backbone.

From a free market standpoint, as consumers and cattlemen, we need to understand a basic truth. There is no “Free Market” when it comes to beef and other livestock products. Four companies, two of them owned by foreign interests, control 85% of the Beef Industry and massive market shares of pork and chicken. They have used this monopoly to artificially inflate and deflate live cattle, pig, and chicken prices for decades, making the most money possible on the packing end by selling to retailers. Today, three of those same companies are investing heavily in lab-grown meat. JBS is the majority shareholder in Biotech Foods. Tyson and Cargill have both invested heavily in UPSIDE Foods, and Cargill has also been investing in Aleph Farms. These three meatpackers join major investments by billionaires such as Bill Gates and Richard Branson in the lab-grown meat sector. I could not find evidence that National Beef, the fourth major meatpacker, is investing in lab-grown meat. 

The observer doesn’t have to wonder very long why companies that only lose money when buying live animals would be investing in technology to not need live animals any longer. This is the beginning of the long game aiming to drive the livestock producer out of business, tied up in a box wrapped by environmentalists opposed to agriculture, shipped by corporations seeking maximum profit, and sold by politicians citing an imaginary “Free Market” while taking money from everyone already mentioned to get elected.

In my first column a few weeks ago, I talked about the term “All Hat, No Cattle” describing some Rapid City Stock Show attendees. The path we’re walking today, with Lab Grown Meat investments growing while the spines of our Elected Officials weaken, “All Hat, No Cattle” could soon be used to someday describe all of us in cattle country if lab-grown meat gains traction, and today definitely describes at least one person who could have lost the upcoming election with this veto.

That veto carried a disturbing message.

The mother cow raising her calf with love on the South Dakota Prairie, with green grass under hoof and sunshine in the sky will be replaced by a cold petri dish under a grow light, in an endless row of steel shelving while gelatinous mush is slowly transformed into something that pretends to be meat. This will all be owned totally by Corporations ran by Billionaires, powered by AI driven Data Centers, and regulated by The Federal Government.

That doesn’t sound like Freedom to me.

That doesn’t sound like American Agriculture.

We have a choice on who we are, and what we want our future to look like.

Let’s make sure it looks like South Dakota.

Gubernatorial Candidates Answer

I caught up with the slate of Gubernatorial Candidates this last week- and I asked them all the same question. I asked candidates directly, and got answers directly. 

“Would you have signed the Lab Grown Meat Ban?”

Toby Dodean (Republican) (YES)

“The second it hit my desk.”

Jon Hansen (Republican) (YES)

“Yes. I voted for it in the House, and I would have signed it as Governor.”

Dan Ahlers (Democrat) (YES)

“I could support the ban on lab meat. Two of the four main investors are meat packers. I see this as a way for them to push out producers.”

Robert Arnold (Democrat) (NO)

“…The sponsors disgraced themselves by referring to cell-cultured meat as adulterated, a term reserved for food that is poisonous or unsafe….I would have vetoed.”

Allison Renville (Independent) (YES)

Scott Morris (Independent) had not read the bill and was unfamiliar with it.

Dusty Johnson (Republican) declined to comment.