Why I am Against "Clean Meat"
My position against cell-grown meat is based primarily on my animal rights focus of ending speciesism. That is where I’m at, what I base my activism on—an end to the use and abuse of animals. I concur with Albert Einstein when he said, “You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.” We cannot advocate a food made from animals and at the same time claim to want to end the exploitation and use of animals. It is impossible. In fact, people supportive of “clean meat” will often extol the supposed virtues of how it will taste, look, smell, and feel like “real” meat. This marketing appeal doesn’t undermine animal exploitation, it affirms it. Using the cell of an animal is still using an animal, however less painful this may sound. And it doesn’t end there; there is the nutrient environment for the cells, which now is primarily fetal bovine serum taken from cow fetuses. Continually marketing meat products, especially supported by vegans, totally undermines attempts to eliminate speciesism. And while some vegans shy away from the ethical or moral standpoint of veganism (being vegan for other good reasons), I feel that should be front and center to our arguments. We need to stop, 100 percent stop, using animals for their meat and their other body parts like fur or leather. A culture that supports meat eating will support the use of animals in other ways. By supporting cell-based meat, you do not stop the slaughter of animals, you support it by continually hawking “meat” and keeping meat as an acceptable animal product for food. It supports the endless use of animals, including in experimentation, in dog- or cock-fighting, horse racing, circuses, zoos, marine parks, trophy hunting, puppy mills, horse-drawn carriages, and so on. Animal use and abuse is thoroughly integrated in our culture, and cell-based meat is a continuation and strengthening of these embedded practices based on cultural notions that humans have the right to dominate all animals for whatever reason we want. As a sociologist, I am well aware of the mechanisms of cultural ideas, practices, and institutions. I am aware of how power works. This is as true with domination over animals as it is with keeping people in slavery, suppressing women, or with ethnic genocide. The cultural ideas are so powerful they are not questioned… until they are. Veganism has never been as popular as it is now, never have people been so interested in it as now, and the increase in both internet searches on the topic and the increase in the consumer dollar spent on vegan products are all shifts we are experiencing now. This is not the time to say “our message is not working.” It IS working. We need to be unified on the message of the moral imperative to ending animal exploitation for compassion reasons, environmental reasons, improved human health, and workers’ rights support. This is exactly the time to be ever more supportive of plant-based foods. With ever more plant-based foods in grocery stores and in restaurants, including fast food chains, this is exactly the time to message all the harder about plant-based foods. It is the time to focus more intensely on delicious, nutritious, and compassionate food choices based on plants. People are hungry for this information that will allow them to be compassionate toward animals, do their part to help stop global warming, reduce their risks of major diseases, and stop the horrific work involved in breeding, raising, and slaughtering animals. These are powerful motivations for change and eating a plant-based diet turns out to be easier than people think. I also do not believe for an instant that cell-grown meat will eliminate factory farms. The answer from corporations (Cargill, Tyson, Perdue, etc.) to the increasing worldwide demand for meat is to provide an array of protein products they own: factory farmed meat, lab-grown meat, smaller organic farmed meat, vegan products, and plant-based foods. Corporations are buying up vegan products now so they can both “clean”-wash their murderous product lines as well as control the “opposition” market. Here are examples of corporations buying vegan companies: Danone bought White Wave (which produces Silk); Maple Leaf Foods bought Field Roast and Lightlife; Otsuka pharmaceutical bought Daiya Vegan Cheese; Nestle bought Sweet Earth Foods. Cell-based meat just becomes another product corporations will control. By purchasing this product, we will be supporting these corporations who own factory farms. Right now they are heavily investing in the cell-based research and no doubt will ultimately purchase and control the end products. There will be no need to eliminate factory farms since many people will want “real” meat and the major corporations are pouring millions of dollars into modernizing and converting their existing factory farms. Corporations have never supported social justice movements since they profit handsomely by the continuation of exploitation. I am also disturbed that the research right now requires killing animals. For cell growth, a nutrient environment has to feed them. Now, most of research (not all) is using calf blood, and the calves are killed. A few research labs are using plant-based nutrients but no one knows the viability of these products. Fetal bovine serum is actually already extracted from millions of fetuses every year because of the growth factors it contains, used in vaccine development and medical research. It will continue to be used in cell-based meat. This is hardly a product vegans will want to eat. Even if cell-based meat reduced the number of animals in factory farms by a few billion, that is not good enough. We need to stop the use of all 70-80 billion farmed animals. We would never say it’s ok to kill only 3 million Jews and not 6 million, or to keep slavery but let slaves read. Vegans should not give up the ethical approach related to animal suffering. Ultimately, that is the only argument that will end the use of animals on a massive scale. There are more vegans all the time, and more people in the world care about animal suffering than ever before. Clean meat will not address meat eating and will never abolish it. We need to keep the analysis of speciesism at the forefront to end animal suffering in all ways. April, 2019 |
Important Links
Clean Meat Hoax Website: https://www.cleanmeat-hoax.com/ Crucial analysis on actual scientific feasibility: https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-scale/ Lab-Grown Meat--A Vegan Perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n45FJIfixqk 2019 Conscious Eating Conference, Clean Meat Debate: www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUWUy0K03_w Lab-Grown Pet Food: www.bondpets.com/ Lab Grown Meat Panel Discussion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFclC-pKGnk https://www.cpr.org/news/story/this-colorado-lab-grown-meat-starts-with-a-living-chicken-her-name-is-inga www.livekindly.co/first-slaughter-free-mouse-meat-pet-food/ https://www.ehn.org/whats-in-a-name-legislatures-labor-over-lab-meat-label-2638969335.html https://eftp.co/news/blended-plant-based-meat https://www.cleanmeat-hoax.com/clean-meat-wont-reduce-the-number-of-animals-now-being-killed.html |