BackgroundCultured meat forms part of the emerging field of cellular agriculture. Still an early stage field it seeks to deliver products traditionally made through livestock rearing in novel forms that require no, or significantly reduced, animal involvement. Key examples include cultured meat, milk, egg white and leather. Here, we focus upon cultured meat and its technical, socio-political and regulatory challenges and opportunities.Scope and approachThe paper reports the thinking of an interdisciplinary team, all of whom have been active in the field for a number of years. It draws heavily upon the published literature, as well as our own professional experience. This includes ongoing laboratory work to produce cultured meat and over seventy interviews with experts in the area conducted in the social science work.Key findings and conclusionsCultured meat is a promising, but early stage, technology with key technical challenges including cell source, culture media, mimicking the in-vivo myogenesis environment, animal-derived and synthetic materials, and bioprocessing for commercial-scale production. Analysis of the social context has too readily been reduced to ethics and consumer acceptance, and whilst these are key issues, the importance of the political and institutional forms a cultured meat industry might take must also be recognised, and how ambiguities shape any emergent regulatory system.

This paper offers a critical examination of the narrative landscape that has emerged with a new movement of alternative proteins intended as substitutes for conventional meat, milk and other animal-based food products. The alternative protein approaches analysed include edible insects, plant-based proteins and cellular agriculture, the latter of which encompasses ‘cultured’ or ‘clean’ meat, milk and egg products produced in vitro via cell-science methods. We build on previous research that has analysed the promissory narratives specific to cultured/clean meat by examining the key promises that have worked across the broader alternative protein movement. In doing so, we develop a five-fold typology that outlines the distinct yet interconnected claims that have operated in alternative protein promotional discourses to date. The second part of the paper examines the counter-narratives that have emerged in response to alternative protein claims from different stakeholders linked to conventional livestock production. We offer a second typology of three counter-narratives that have so far characterised these responses. Through mapping this narrative landscape, we show how different types of ‘goodness’ have been ascribed by alternative protein and conventional livestock stakeholders to their respective approaches. Moreover, our analysis reveals a series of tensions underpinning these contested food futures, many of which have long histories in broader debates over what constitutes better (protein) food production and consumption. The paper's discussion contributes to ongoing research across the social sciences on the ontological politics of (good) food, and the key role of narratives in constructing and contesting visions of ‘better’ food futures.

This paper explores the status and formation of edibility as a new site of food biopolitics. It builds directly on recent debates in geography that have examined the biopolitical mechanisms by which consumers are responsibilised to become “good” eaters. To date, these literatures have largely focused on already‐familiar food products. In contrast, this paper examines the biopolitics of novel foods – specifically, a range of new alternative proteins (APs), including cellular agriculture, edible insects and plant‐based proteins. Through their use of (bio)technology, APs claim to overcome the environmental and ethical crises that increasingly define the current livestock industry, and indeed our current epoch, now commonly referred to as the Anthropocene. They consequently offer individuals the choice of consuming their way to a more stable and ethical post‐Anthropocene. Critical to consumer adoption, however, is public acceptance of APs as “food.” Given that their raw materials and production methods are unfamiliar to many consumers’ food practices, there is much work to be done by AP developers to convince people that their products are indeed edible. It is in this process of edibility formation that I identify new biopolitical potentialities – what I refer to as the biopolitics of edibility. Drawing on recent critical geography literatures that have examined how “things become food” (Roe, ), the paper identifies two distinct yet co‐productive ways in which AP developers are conducting this transition from inedible to edible: first, through material interventions on the molecular, physical and visceral characteristics of APs; and second, through discursive interventions that work to normalise APs through textual and visual language. It concludes by reflecting on the biopolitical implications of these processes and how the edibility formation of APs is both entangled and implicit in current politics around “good” eating and the individualised project of realising the post‐Anthropocene.

Cultured/clean/cell-based meat (CM) now has a near two decade history of laboratory research, commencing with the early NASA-funded work at Touro College and the bioarts practice of the Tissue Culture and Art project. Across this period the field, or as it is now more commonly termed, the “space,” has developed significantly while promoting different visions for what CM is and can do, and the best mechanisms for delivery. Here we both analyse and critically engage with this near-twenty year period as a productive provocation to those engaged with CM, or considering becoming so. This paper is not a history of the field, and does not offer a comprehensive timeline. Instead it identifies significant activities, transitions, and moments in which key meanings and practices have taken form or exerted influence. We do this through analyzing two related themes: the CM “institutional context” and the CM “interpretative package.” The former, the institutional context, refers to events and infrastructures that have come into being to support and shape the CM field, including university activities, conferences, third sector groups, various potential funding mechanisms, and the establishment of a start-up sector. The latter, the interpretative package, refers to the constellation of factors that shape or assert how CM should be understood, including the various names used to describe it, accounts of what it will achieve, and most recently, the emergent regulatory discussions that frame its legal standing. Across the paper we argue it is productive to think of the CM community in terms of a first and second wave. The first wave was more university-based and broadly covers the period from the millennium until around the 2013 cultured burger event. The second wave saw the increasing prevalence of a start-up culture and the circuits of venture capital interest that support it. Through this analysis we seek to provoke further reflection upon how the CM community has come to be as it is, and how this could develop in the future.

Beyond Meat, a food technology company based in California, is currently developing a range of plant-based proteins that aim to provide more sustainable, ethical, and healthful alternatives to conventional meat. Its products are also aiming to be viscerally equivalent in terms of their meatlike taste, texture, and overall sensory experience. These alternative proteins (APs) are not, however, intended merely as a substitute for conventional meat. Instead they are viewed and marketed by their developers as meat, made simply from a different raw material and via different methods. Yet as animal meat has become increasingly linked with environmental, health, and ethical concerns, Beyond Meat is having to negotiate a careful balance between positioning its products as meatlike in some respects and not meatlike in others in order to gain consumer adoption. To become “meat” in consumer thinking not only depends on the things these APs are made of—both material and ideological—but also the things that are actively excluded; as such, their materiality is made of purposefully chosen “stuff” and “non-stuff.” The article explores this decision-making via my fieldwork encounters with Beyond Meat's products. Using a visceral-autoethnographic approach, I discuss how certain (non)stuff was “made to matter and not matter” (Evans and Miele 2012) to me during these encounters, and how this careful balancing of stuff can create new and problematic imaginaries, moral politics, and misguided understandings of what constitutes “better” foods and “better” eaters. The observations made contribute to existing discussions on visceral methodologies, perceptions of (novel) foods, embodied consumption practices, and the ways in which bodies are made as eaters and things as food.

Plant-based milk alternatives-or mylks-have surged in popularity over the past ten years. We consider the politics and consumer subjectivities fostered by mylks as part of the broader trend towards 'plant-based' food. We demonstrate how mylk companies inherit and strategically deploy positive framings of milk as wholesome and convenient, as well as negative framings of dairy as environmentally damaging and cruel, to position plant-based as the 'better' alternative. By navigating this affective landscape, brands attempt to (re)make mylk as simultaneously palatable and disruptive to the status quo. We examine the politics of mylks through the concept of palatable disruption, where people are encouraged to care about the environment, health, and animal welfare enough to adopt mylks but to ultimately remain consumers of a commodity food. By encouraging consumers to reach for "plant-based" as a way to cope with environmental catastrophe and a life out of balance, mylks promote a neoliberal ethic: they individualize systemic problems and further entrench market mechanisms as solutions, thereby reinforcing the political economy of industrial agriculture. In conclusion, we reflect on the limits of the current plant-based trend for transitioning to more just and sustainable food production and consumption. Keywords Alternative food network • Dairy • Food industry • Neoliberal • Protein • Vegan The rise of plant milks "If you want to change the world change your milk" (Plenish Drinks 2019). "The subtle sweet and creamy flavour of Alpro Soya will brighten any breakfast. It isn't plain, it's plain delicious!" (Alpro 2019). Plant-based milk alternatives (or mylks 1) are booming. In the US, sales rose by 61% between 2012 and 2017 (Mintel 2018), reaching $1.9 billion by 2019 (Good Food Institute 2019). Varieties have expanded beyond the traditional soymilk to include mylks made from almond, oat, coconut, pea, hemp, and other grains, seeds, nuts, and legumes. Mylks now account for 13% of total retail milk sales in the US (Good Food Institute 2018) and around 8% in the UK (Mintel 2019). Other plant-based dairy substitutes (ice cream, yogurt, creamer, and cheese) have seen similarly rapid growth, with US sales doubling over the past 2 years to $920 million in 2019 (Good Food Institute 2019). Once sidelined in natural food stores and health food aisles, plant mylk has 'gone mainstream,' as a recent piece in The Economist affirms, proclaiming 2019 'the year of the vegan' (Parker 2018). Yet, the recent surge of plant-based milk and meat may owe less to people adopting vegan diets and more to the emerging flexitarian trend (Wohl 2019).

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Veganism is the subject of an increasingly diverse body of social scientific research, yet it remains relatively understudied in geography. Meanwhile, contemporary cultural commentaries note how veganism has gone mainstream, with critics warning of veganism’s corporate nature – expressed in the rise of what we term ‘Big Veganism’. We argue that food geographers are well placed to examine these trends. We first review vegan studies work beyond geography that examines and critiques the mainstreaming of veganism. We focus on literature that explores multiple contested modes of veganism, veganism as praxis in place and the rise of corporate veganism as useful foundations for geographers to build on, particularly in light of currently unfolding developments in vegan cultures and practice. Taking this work forward, we identify four conceptual traditions from research in food geographies – following foodways, alternative food networks and the cultural and material politics of eating – to develop a ‘vegan food geographies’ programme that aims to advance critical geographic work on veganism and the emerging implications of its contemporary mainstreaming.