Cultivated Meat Isn’t a New Flavour of Meat
Cultivated meat isn’t a new flavour of meat, and it would be a catastrophic error to introduce it as a mere optional ‘alternative’ to slaughtered animal meat.
What is Cultivated Meat?
Cultivated meat is a sustainable and ethical protein, identical to animal muscle tissue down to the cellular level, produced by growing animal cells in a clean, controlled environment without the need for animal slaughter.
Cultivated meat represents our species’ ideal replacement for our once-necessary need to forcefully take the lives of beings who do not want to die.
History has shown that leaving transformative changes to consumer choice often undermines their adoption. Why should the introduction of cultivated meat be any different from the transitions that improve public health and protect the livability of our planet?
A Few Thought Experiments:
Imagine if the switch from lead to unleaded fuel was not ordered but rather left to the consumer to decide if unleaded fuel was ‘right for them’. Given the choice to abstain from unleaded fuel and ignoring the horrific consequences of lead poisoning, speculations and conspiracy theories grew about the negative consequences of unleaded fuel.
Imagine if the switch from ozone-depleating CFCs to HFCs was not demanded but rather left to the consumer to decide if CFCs were ‘right for them’.
Imagine if the switch to wearing seatbelts was not required but rather left to the consumer to decide if not wearing a seatbelt was ‘right for them’.
Imagine if the yellow fever vaccine was not mandated but rather left to the consumer to decide if not being vaccinated against yellow fever was ‘right for them’.
Imagine if the choice between slaughtered animal meat and cultivated meat was left to consumers. Given the freedom to continue paying for the artificial insemination of an animal, confining them and their offspring against their wishes, and forcefully taking all of their lives — what would that imply?
What’s the Catch?
When technological and ethical breakthroughs are developed but a clear and decisive switch does not follow, it inevitably leads to scepticism and forms a breeding ground for conspiracies about the inadequacy of the replacement, suggesting that a powerful incumbent with a conflict of interest likely exists.
Sugar Replacement Analogy
Differences:
Firstly, as mentioned, cultured meat is identical to animal muscle tissue down to the cellular level, however, sugar-free sweeteners are not identical to their original counterpart.
Artificial sweeteners activate the sweet taste receptors in our mouths via substances from which our body can extract only a few calories.
Secondly, the case for switching to zero sugar sweeteners in foods is less compelling as sugar leading to health issues seems to be an issue of moderation: Excess sugar can lead to obesity which in turn causes health issues such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, high blood pressure, unhealthy cholesterol, asthma, sleep apnea, gallstones, kidney stones, infertility, and as many as 11 types of cancers.
Similarities:
Just as sugar corporations face a complete market wipeout if their product is replaced with a superior product, so too do powerful animal agriculture corporations, with their influential lobbyists.
The Sugar Research Foundation funded studies in the 1960s and early 1970s that linked sucrose consumption to various health risks, including coronary heart disease and potentially cancer, but terminated and did not publish projects that could have harmful findings for sugar interests.
Sugar companies have funded research that may influence findings regarding the health effects of sugar substitutes in test mice, potentially biasing outcomes to emphasize negative impacts. Mice are not humans, and animal testing consistently fails to replicate in humans. The translation of drugs from animal testing to human treatments has a failure rate of over 92%. (Poor Translatability of Biomedical Research Using Animals — A Narrative Review)
I can already see the industry’s incumbent playbook of “FUD” (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) being used to fool the public into seeing cultivated meat as an optional and highly suspect product for “other people”.
The usual suspects… Florida, Alabama, Arizona and Tennessee, but also Italy and France have introduced laws to ban cultivated meat.
Kill the cows, Save the industry.
Cultivated meat is not an optional ‘alternative’ to slaughtered animal meat; it is an ethical imperative.
