Soinski on Cell-Cultured Meat, the Food Safety and Inspection Service, and Semiotics

Saylor S. Soinski (Yale Law School) has posted The Semiotics of Meat: FSIS Regulations and the Construction of Meaning (13 J. Animal & Env't L. 41 (2022)) on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

In response to the development of cell-cultured meat, the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has indicated that it will promulgate a new standard of identity. This response does not align with agency policy, which requires a new standard only when the physical characteristics of a novel product differ from a known product—for example, cloned meat did not receive a new standard. This Article argues that FSIS’s break from policy is a response to a semiotic framework that inextricably links “real meat” to slaughter and that FSIS is acting inappropriately in regulating meat as a symbol rather than material object.