The bill, approved by the Italian government on Tuesday night, bans Italian industry from producing food or feed from "cell cultures or tissues derived from vertebrates," Reuters writes.
Italy's nationalist rule, led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, has vowed to protect the Italian food industry from technological innovations deemed harmful. According to Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida, lab-grown products threaten the traditional link between agriculture and food.
According to a survey, a majority of Italians, 84 percent, are against laboratory-grown food, writes the Italian food magazine Italia a Tavola.
Can be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars
Anyone who violates the new law can be fined up to 60,000 euros, just over SEK 670,000, and risks having their factory shut down or losing the right to public funding for up to three years.
In its fight against unconventional food, the Italian government also wants information labels to be put on products containing or made from insects. This is after a debate flared up about the use of flour made on crickets.
"People need to be able to make an informed choice," Meloni has written on Twitter in the past.
See more about how lab-grown food is created in the clip above.