From Vegan To Cegan: Could cellular agriculture create a whole new kind of food identity?
The major difference might be that Vegans reject thinking of animal products as food categories, while Cegans might only reject the conventional production methods of such but embrace the cellular end product.
MURIEL VERNON: There has been a lot of debate as to what we should call cultivated meat (such as cultured meat, cell-based meat, in vitro meat, etc.) but not a lot about what we should call its future consumers. Why do we need to call this new type of consumption choice anything at all? Will the novelty of consuming bio-identical animal products made via cellular agriculture really be profound enough to become part of our future food narratives and identities?… should it be cellagetarian? Or celltarian?… Or cegan?
How might ceganism as a new food identity affect its relationship to both veganism and carnism? The vegan and the cegan share exactly the same environmental, human health-, and animal welfare-related rationales for their choices not to eat conventionally raised animals or animal products. The major remaining difference might be that most vegans reject thinking of animals or animal products as food categories while cegans might only reject the conventional production methods of such but embrace the cellular end product…
Although cultivated meat might be a few years away from scaling up for mass consumption, and thus consumer identity building, we don’t really need to have cultivated meat be a reality to imagine its impact on food narratives. We already have convenient blueprints on how veganism evolved from annoying dinner guests to be accommodated (and uncomfortable dinner conversations to be avoided) into the fastest growing billion-dollar global food market that has now made “plant-based” a common household name. However, it is misleading to think that the current popularity of, and demand for plant-based foods has produced enough vegans to make a large enough impact to halt climate change progression.
Most people who consume plant-based products are not vegans; many incorporate these products to eat more sustainably and be ethically responsible. That’s a good thing. But it’s not enough to break down millennia of culinary traditions built around animal consumption that are here to stay no matter how much Impossible burgers bleed. It’s certainly not enough to stem the growing demand for meat world-wide that creates at least a hundred meat eaters for every one vegan. That’s why ceganism is not the new veganism but the new carnism, and this is also why cellular agriculture products are not intended for or marketed to vegans.
The rationales for going cegan may very well be identical to those of vegans but they will still need two vastly different menus. Like vegans, cegan dinner guests might start equally uncomfortable conversations about why they chose to be cegan, and you better keep an eye on which side of the grill you placed their cultivated chicken breast because you won’t be able to tell them apart. But unlike vegans, cegans will remain foodie buddies with their fellow carnists, for the love of meat has been deeply embedded in food sharing since the dawn of mankind. Ceganism may very well rescue self-proclaimed “failed vegans” who tried to give up meat, dairy, and eggs and who keep apologizing for their inevitable capitulation to the seductive power of meat. SOURCE…
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