Upside Foods, a company developing laboratory-generated meat products, announced Monday (July 1) that it was firing 26 employees and restructuring its executive and leadership teams to delegate processes more directly to staff.

Upside CEO Uma Valeti wrote in an email obtained by WIRED that the company is now focusing on narrowing what it said was "a tighter set of priorities" to launch its products in the next two years.

READ NEXT: John Deere Cuts 600 Jobs Across 3 Midwest Plants

Struggles in Developing Lab-Grown Meat

It is understood that Upside, one of the best-funded startups in the cultivated meat industry, has planned to put a large cultivated meat plant in Illinois on hold and is making around 16 jobs redundant. 

In the most recent email, Valeti stated that the company was also pausing its "large-scale tissue program" to focus on scaling efforts on so-called "suspension" products, which would support the production of chicken nuggets, pates, and other ground-meat products.

Valeti also mentioned that the company and the industry in general have been facing legislative and regulatory "headwinds" after the Florida state government's ban on cultivated meat took effect Monday.

In a separate press release, Upside hosted an event advocating food freedom before the ban.

Alabama also passed a similar law prohibiting the sale of cultivated meat. 

READ MORE: FDA Warns Bimbo Bakeries to Not Label Products with Allergens When They Contain None