Growing Meat in Laboratories: The Promise, Ontology, and Ethical Boundary-Work of Using Muscle Cells to Make Food

Abstract

Over the last decade, several clusters of scientists have been using animal cells in an attempt to grow meat. Known as in vitro, or cultured, meat, the technology involves tissue engineering muscle cells for potential consumption as food. Those supporting the technology articulate a diversity of potential benefits in producing meat in this way, which include environmental-, health-, innovation-, and animal-welfare-related benefits. This essay reports on interviews with scientists and animal activists involved in making and promoting in vitro meat (IVM). While the technology remains in its infancy, its promotion has assertively been pursued with a set of promissory narratives designed to enroll potential funders, commercial investors, and consumers. The essay explores the ethical boundary-work —the drawing of boundaries around what constitutes ethical scientific practice—pursued in the creation of socio-technical expectations around IVM. In particular, it focuses on the emergence of an animal-libratory promissory narrative by exploring how ethically correct practice toward animals is constructed and used to underpin notions of what IVM is and what it can do . The key contributions of the essay are to provide a detailed analysis of the situated ethics of IVM, and to make explicit the relatedness among ethics, promise, and ontology.

In vitro meat production system: why and how?

“…Weele and Driessen (2013) have highlighted the persistent opinion of Peter Singer who describes cultured meat as the main source of hope to curb animal suffering. Further, it has been discussed by several authors that in vitro meat has the potential to eliminate animal suffering and environmental damage (Stephens 2013).…”

Death-Free Dairy? The Ethics of Clean Milk

“…14 I note that, while lacking in (some) projects developing clean meat (see Stephens 2013), an aspiration towards veganism is at the base of clean milk development. Perfect Day-despite its statement of support for ''the countless dairy farmers across the globe who use sustainable farming practices and genuinely care for their animals''-is keen to stress that its milk is ''100% vegan'' (Perfect Day n.d.; see also Pandya 2014), while the name of the Real Vegan Cheese project is revealing.…”

An ecofeminist perspective on new food technologies

“…Over and above concerns about animal welfare, challenging and unprecedented questions are raised by the ontological, epistemological, and ethical boundary work necessitated by new food technologies (Stephens, 2013;Weisberg, 2015), to which easy answers cannot readily be 79 found within dominant discourses. Traditional animal welfare and animal rights approacheswhich tend to prefer reason over emotion as a guide to ethical decision-making-are not necessarily adequate to explain why many people feel an intrinsic revulsion at manipulating animals for human benefit, even though a particular practice or technology "does not violate a right and does not cause pain or suffering" (Pascalev, 2006, p. 216).…”