The Cultural Impact Of Cultured Meat
D. BANIS: Should vegans embrace cultured meat? Will meat grown in the lab alienate us from nature even more? And could lab-grown meat at one point become something entirely different from traditional meat?
DAVIDE BANIS: ‘Producing and commercializing cultured meat — meat produced by in-vitro cultivation of animal cells — is one of today’s most hyped scientific and technological challenges. Dozens of startups around the world, generously backed by VC funding, are competing to hit the market with the Holy Grail of the food industry: meat produced without slaughtering animals. But the quest to actualize lab-grown meat isn’t just opening up unprecedented technological possibilities. It’s also posing new moral conundrums and cultural challenges.
Should vegans embrace cultured meat? Will meat grown in the lab alienate us from nature even more? Is it cannibalism if we eat lab-grown human meat? And could lab-grown meat at one point become something entirely different from traditional meat? To address these issues, I reached out to Dr. Cor van der Weele, who is a professor of humanistic philosophy at the University of Wageningen, sort of the Oxford of food innovation. I asked Professor van der Weele — who will also be speaking at an event on the future of meat I’m organizing with Kinder, the company I work for — to help me untangle a few of the possible moral and cultural implications of cultured meat’. SOURCE…
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