Abstract
Simple SummaryThe idea of cultured meat is to grow meat from animal cells with tissue engineering techniques. Cultured meat is an idea under investigation that will not be ready for the market for several years. It is also still open what it could or should be like. We argue that this openness offers the opportunity to explore different directions in which this idea could be developed. Feelings, critical thinking and the imagination all have important roles to play in this exploration.The development of cultured meat has gained urgency through the increasing problems associated with meat, but what it might become is still open in many respects. In existing debates, two main moral profiles can be distinguished. Vegetarians and vegans who embrace cultured meat emphasize how it could contribute to the diminishment of animal suffering and exploitation, while in a more mainstream profile cultured meat helps to keep meat eating sustainable and affordable. In this paper we argue that these profiles do not exhaust the options and that (gut) feelings as well as imagination are needed to explore possible future options. On the basis of workshops, we present a third moral profile, “the pig in the backyard”. Here cultured meat is imagined as an element of a hybrid community of humans and animals that would allow for both the consumption of animal protein and meaningful relations with domestic (farm) animals. Experience in the workshops and elsewhere also illustrates that thinking about cultured meat inspires new thoughts on “normal” meat. In short, the idea of cultured meat opens up new search space in various ways. We suggest that ethics can take an active part in these searches, by fostering a process that integrates (gut) feelings, imagination and rational thought and that expands the range of our moral identities.
Highlights
Eating meat is losing moral credibility in many affluent societies
The public voted for the essay whose author was about to eat meat for the first time in 40 years because “the very first laboratory-grown hamburger is to make its debut”, real meat “without the mess and the misery” [2]. This laboratory-grown hamburger is a specific form of a more general idea that is known as cultured meat or in vitro meat [3]: making meat from animal cells, with tissue engineering techniques or through 3D printing and with animals only figuring as the source of an initial biopsy
3D printing and additional techniques will enable the production of other things than hamburgers, sausages or steaks; it does not require much imagination to see that cultured meat is a potentially revolutionary technology that could dramatically change established routines of production and consumption
Summary
Eating meat is losing moral credibility in many affluent societies. In March 2012, the New York. Cultured meat might lead to health gains in several ways: control for bacteria and viruses may be more reliable in cell cultures than in animals, and cultured meat might be enriched with healthy components This list of estimated pros in principle makes for a compelling argument to research and develop this form of protein, assuming a significant proportion of consumers would be willing to eat it. The overall aim of the paper is to connect historical, empirical, methodological and reflexive considerations as elements of a plea for imaginative forms of ethics Those elements are not taken up in a straightforwardly structured line of argument; we rather hope to clarify from different angles and beginnings how the idea of cultured meat inspires a rethinking of meat and how it can widen the search space for new protein practices. Ethics through and as design is our characterization of the type of ethics that strengthens these searches—and that helps to expand the range of our possible moral identities
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