Simpson celebrates agriculture bill signing, warns of ESG regulations harming farmers, ranchers

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Florida Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson celebrated the recent signing of an agriculture bill by Gov. Ron DeSantis during an interview with Florida’s Voice.

He warned of ideologically based regulatory policies being pushed on America’s farmers and ranchers, and how they could lead to be detrimental for the state and nation.

“I think this was a great day for agriculture, it was a great day for the cattleman industry, and meat industry and meat grown products,” Simpson said.

The package, SB 1084, prohibits and creates penalties for the manufacturing, sale and distribution of cultivated meat in the state.

It also preempt the regulation of electric vehicle charging stations to the state and prohibits local governments from implementing their own policies.

Simpson explained the process of how cultivated meat is produced and why it’s important for the state to regulate it.

“Essentially, you would receive a biomass into a restaurant, a growing facility of some sort, you would then grow that biomass in a petri dish, and then, using a 3D printer, you would make it look like the piece of meat that you would like to customarily eat,” he said.

“And of course, every bit of that process is fake,” he said. “Every bit of that process is something that the legislature did not want to tolerate, the Department of Agriculture did not want to tolerate and was driven substantially by the net zero folks.”

The commissioner explained that “net zero” advocates believe the U.S. needs to entirely put an end to the cattle industry in order to have net zero carbon emissions by a certain year.

He also tied them in with similar advocates of environmental, social and governance policies, known as ESG, which have been embraced by specific companies and organizations.

Simpson expressed that one of the reasons the state took action on the issue was because leaders are still unsure of the the health and safety concerns surrounding cultivated meats.

He emphasized that ESG is an “existential threat” to agriculture and has severely impacted the industry in other states.

The commissioner pointed to a multistate effort he was part of, demanding large banks end ties with a program promoting ESG and harming agriculture around the country. He reported that several of the banks immediately backed out of the program and issued statements publicly showing their separation.

“If you want to really put farmers out of business, besides the regulatory structure that the Biden administration is very fond of, then you go to finance,” Simpson said. “If we can’t get financed to plant our crops or to purchase our equipment and things of that nature, you’ve also put us out of business.”

He explained how the federal government, particularly the Environmental Protection Agency, also imposes ESG regulations on other states, and that Florida has worked to combat these requirements for the agriculture industries in places like Arizona.

“Agriculture is a national security issue,” Simpson said. “What would happen if there were just one week of no food in the grocery store. Just one week. you’d have chaos in this country.”

“The pandemic taught us a lot about how vulnerable our supply chains were,” he said. “And our small farmers is what keeps our vibrant supply chain here in the United States.”

“Unfortunately, over the last 20 years, we have become a net importer of food into this country,” the commissioner said. “And then imagine if that grows to 50% of our food has to be imported, or 60%. When happens then if there’s a pandemic breakout and we can’t get those shipments?”

He added how it’s very important that the U.S. does not become reliant on hostile foreign governments for food importation.