Meat-ing Demand: Is In Vitro Meat a Pragmatic, Problematic, or Paradoxical Solution?

Abstract

Even in the midst of an ecological crisis, population and income continue to increase and so too does the global appetite for meat. One response by scientists has been to work towards making in vitro meat (IVM) a commercial reality, which would allow meat to be produced on a large scale without the husbandry and slaughter of enormous numbers of animals, as under the current industrial meat production system. Proponents of IVM technology claim that it could cut hunger, offer public health benefits, mitigate the environmental effects of conventional industrial meat production, and improve animal welfare. However, taking a critical, ecofeminist perspective on IVM highlights the need to assess not only the technical attributes and possibilities of the technology but also its underlying worldview as well as the unintended social and environmental consequences that could result. Reflecting on the question of whether IVM is a pragmatic, problematic, or paradoxical solution to the ills associated with industrial meat production and increasing meat consumption, this article argues that optimistic claims trumpeting the promissory potential of IVM are over-simplistic and warrant closer scrutiny. The importance of careful deliberation on the implications of emerging technologies like IVM cannot be understated because how the ethical discourse unfolds in the early stages will be significant in influencing public perception and social acceptance as well as shaping policy and regulatory design.

Analysis of Scientific and Press Articles Related to Cultured Meat for a Better Understanding of Its Perception

“…Both in WoS (in Topic, as of December 31, 2019) and Factiva (as of December 31, 2019) databases, we searched for articles containing the following words: "artificial meat" OR "meat in vitro" OR "in vitro meat" OR "cultured meat" OR "synthetic meat" OR "lab-grown meat" OR "lab meat" OR "cell-based meat" OR "clean meat" OR "fake meat" OR "slaughter-free meat" OR "cell-cultured meat" OR "craft meat" OR "cultivated meat" OR "victimless meat" OR "animal-free meat" OR "cruelty-free meat" OR "shmeat" OR "Frankenmeat" OR "test Cultured meat (97) a Edelman et al, 2005;Bhat and Fayaz, 2011;Forgacs et al, 2012;Post, 2012;Hopkins, 2015;Bryant and Barnett, 2018;Hamdan et al, 2018;Bodiou et al, 2020;Chriki and Hocquette, 2020;Weinrich et al, 2020;Zhang et al, 2020 in vitro meat (85) Datar and Betti, 2010;Laestadius, 2015;Sharma et al, 2015;Hocquette, 2016;Wilks and Phillips, 2017;Lee, 2018;Bhat et al, 2019;Bryant and Barnett, 2019;Woll, 2019;Li et al, 2020 Clean meat (25) Lagally and Specht, 2017;Windhorst, 2018Windhorst, , 2019 Artificial meat (21) Bonny et al, 2015Bonny et al, , 2017Hocquette, 2015;Hocquette et al, 2015;Orzechowski, 2015;Sodhi, 2017 Synthetic meat (19) Kadim et al, 2015;Marcu et al, 2015;Jones, 2017;Siegrist and Sütterlin, 2017;Lynch and Pierrehumbert, 2019;Warner, 2019 Cell-based meat (10)/cell-cultured meat (1)/cellular meat (1) <...>…”

Trends in cultured meat

“…After the launch of the first burger produced with meat farmed in the world, still on an experimental scale, in August 2013, different terms are used to designate this "new meat". Some terms are synthetic meat (Marcu et al, 2015), "artificial" (Hocquette et al, 2015;Bonny et al, 2017;Sodhi, 2017), "in vitro" (Carruth, 2013;Dilworth and McGregor, 2014;Schaefer and Savulescu, 2014;Mat-tick et al, 2015;Wilks and Phillips, 2017;Acevedo et al, 2018;Lee, 2018), "laboratory meat" (Galusky, 2014). In addition "cultured meat" (Verbeke et al, 2015;Hamdan et al, 2017;Bryant and Barnett, 2018;Siegrist, Sütterlin and Hartmann, 2018;Servick, 2018), being this nomenclature used in this study.…”

Promises of meat and milk alternatives: an integrative literature review on emergent research themes

“…The statements that assert similarity between animal-based foods and alternatives have been strongly countered by stakeholders within animal agriculture (Keefe 2018;Boler and Woerner 2017;Bonny et al 2015). Questions about the appropriate terminology to be used in marketing and labelling in relation to the alternatives have also led to regulatory battles (Stephens et al 2018a;Petetin 2014;Lee 2018;Bhat et al 2019;Carreño and Dolle 2018;Bolton 2017). Within the EU, it is currently prohibited to use protected terms such as 'milk' or 'cheese' for plant-based products even when preceded by specifications of their plant origin.…”

“…Governance structures focused on just and sustainable principles are crucial in order to ensure that novel future realities of food correspond to the promises attached to meat and milk alternatives (Stephens et al 2018a;van der Weele et al 2019). For example, cell-based products could be evaluated based on how well they contribute to participatory democratic processes, transparency, corporate responsibility, and sustainability goals (Lee 2018).…”