Lab-grown meat could let humanity ignore a serious moral failing

The moral problem stems from the fact that we will likely switch over to lab-grown meat because it is cheap, or thanks to its benefits for human health or the environment. That is, we will do it for our own sake and not for the sake of animals.

BEN BRAMBLE: ‘Lab-grown meat is being hailed as the solution to the factory farming of animals. The downside of factory farming for the cows, chickens and pigs themselves is obvious enough. But it is also bad for human health, given the amount of antibiotics pumped into the animals, as well as for the environment, given the resources required to provide us with industrial quantities of meat. By contrast, lab-grown meat need have none of these costs. Once the technology is perfected it will be indistinguishable in taste and texture from real meat, and will be cheaper to produce and purchase. There is, however, a major problem with lab-grown meat: a moral problem.

Factory farming causes billions of animals to live and die in great pain each year. Our response has been almost total indifference and inaction and, despite the rise of vegetarianism and veganism in some quarters, more animals are killed today for food than ever before. This does not reflect well on us, morally speaking, and history will not remember us kindly. The moral problem stems from the fact that we will likely switch over to lab-grown meat because it is cheap, or thanks to its benefits for human health or the environment. That is, we will do it for our own sake and not for the sake of animals’. SOURCE…

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