LINCOLN, Neb. — The prospect of banning the sale of lab-grown meat might seem like a no-brainer in Nebraska, where beef is king, but some of the proposal’s staunchest opposition has come from ranchers and farming groups who say they can compete without the government’s help.

Gov. Jim Pillen of Nebraska — one of the largest pork producers in the country — is behind the push to ban cultivated meat, saying he wants to protect ranchers and meat producers. The Republican governor signed an executive order last August to keep state agencies and contractors from procuring lab-created meat, even though it could be years before such products are on store shelves.

A number of ranchers and meat industry groups are pushing back on the governor’s plan.

Dan Morgan is a fourth- generation cattle rancher from central Nebraska who supplies high-end beef to all 50 states and six countries. He welcomes companies seeking to produce lab-grown meat to “jump into the pool” and try to compete with his Waygu beef. Stifling competition in a free market should be anathema in a Republican- dominated state like Nebraska, he said.

“It sounds like a bunch of right-wing Republicans echoing a bunch of left-wing Democrats,” he said, adding that the government should be limited to regulating the new product’s labels and inspecting its facilities to ensure food safety. “After that, it’s up to the consumer to make the decision about what they buy and eat.”

Nebraska is among about a dozen states that have introduced measures to ban the manufacture, sale or distribution of lab-grown products, according to an Associated Press analysis using the bill-tracking software Plural. Florida and Alabama have already enacted such bans.

The target of the bills is “cell-cultivated” or “cell-cultured” meat, which is grown from the cells of animals in bioreactor steel tanks. The cells are bathed for weeks in nutrients, prompting them to grow and divide, turning them into skeletal muscle, fat and connective tissues.

The push to ban cultivated meat comes well before the innovation could be considered an industry. While more than two dozen companies are working to develop such meat products, only two — Upside Foods and Good Meat, both based in California — have been approved by the federal government to sell cultivated chicken in the United States. Even then, none of the companies are close to mass producing and selling the products on store shelves.

The Association for Meat, Poultry and Seafood Innovation, a trade group for the emerging cultured meat industry, disputes Pillen’s insistence that it’s a threat to the traditional meat industry, noting studies that show global demand for meat-based protein will double by 2050.

“We’re really a complementary component here,” said Suzi Gerber, executive director of the association. “So it’s a little bit mystifying to me why any individual stakeholder would see this as a threat.”