As cultivated meat moves closer to widespread commercial availability, states have responded with labeling laws ranging from flexible disclosure requirements to highly prescriptive mandates dictating both the language and presentation of product labels. Although these laws are commonly justified as measures to prevent consumer deception, they compel private speakers to communicate information chosen by the state, raising First Amendment questions.
This Note examines whether cultivated meat labeling requirements fall within the Supreme Court’s deferential Zauderer framework or instead must satisfy the more demanding Central Hudson test. It argues that while modest labeling requirements that compel brief, neutral disclosures are likely to survive under Zauderer, increasingly prescriptive mandates pose a closer constitutional question. In particular, regulations that require rhetorically loaded terminology or commandeer substantial portions of product packaging may transform a disclosure designed to inform consumers into a state-scripted effort to shape perceptions and behavior. As lower courts continue to grapple with the meaning of Zauderer’s “uncontroversial” requirement, cultivated meat labeling provides a timely context in which to examine whether the doctrine will continue to tolerate increasingly expressive forms of compelled commercial speech or will instead impose a meaningful constitutional limitation on the government’s ability to use private packaging to advance its own policy objectives.
