EXOTIC GLUTTONY: Cultivated meats could actually threaten wildlife and endangered animals
Some animal rights organizations argue that cultured meat puts the total abolition of animal exploitation on the back burner and, since it doesn’t challenge the idea that animal flesh is edible, may augment rather than replace factory farming. Moreover, as the market for meat increases, it could also create an appetite for real 'exotic' meats, such as tiger or zebra, putting additional pressure on already-endangered wildlife populations.
JUDE WHILEY: Which animals we find acceptable to eat vary from person to person, according to our values, palates, and upbringing. Many consider eating cows and chickens okay, but not octopus, dolphin, or tiger. Right now, you’d be hard-pressed to find tiger meat in your local supermarket, but developments in tech are making a future possible in which eating exotic meats, from alligator to zebra, could be commonplace.
But, how? Well, factory-farmed tiger, thankfully, is not about to become a dystopian reality. But we might one day eat “ethical” tiger through innovations in cultured-cell technology.
Cultured meat, also known as cell-cultivated meat, is not pork reared on caviar and Italian neorealist cinema — it is meat that has been grown in a lab. It has the potential to liberate animals from exploitation, creating burgers and sausages from meat that has been grown in bioreactors and harvested without the death of a sentient being. The first cell-cultivated chicken in the US came to market this summer. It’s an exciting technology, as it could substantially reduce the number of animals slaughtered yearly (or, at least, limit the expansion of that number).
It’s not all chicken and pork, though. Recently, startups such as Primeval Foods and Vow have begun developing meat cultured from the cells of exotic (and even extinct) animals, such as tiger, zebra, or mammoth. A gigantic mammoth meatball produced by Vow earlier this year brought many people’s attention to the potential applications of cultured-cell technology, and advocates argue the novelty of nontraditional meats could help win over an otherwise hard-to-reach group of potential consumers.
Some animal advocates, however, have voiced concerns that popularizing exotic meats could have unforeseen consequences. The tech, if successful (a big if), could create an appetite for real tiger meat, putting additional pressure on already-endangered wild big cat populations. And some vegans, who advocate against the commodification of animals, worry that eating cell-cultivated meat could entrench the belief that animals are something to be exploited and consumed, rather than beings to be protected; they argue the desire to manufacture cultured tiger meat reveals that “clean” meat is a fallacy promoted by meat producers developing new ways to exploit the animal kingdom…
Charities such as Food & Water Watch argue that because lab-grown meat doesn’t challenge the idea that animal flesh is edible, it will augment rather than replace factory farming. As the market for meat increases around the world, they predict, there could simply be no reduction in the number of animals currently slaughtered yearly (tens of billions of land animals and hundreds of millions or even trillions of fish). Rather, cultivated meat could merely limit the expansion of this number. While this is arguably a good thing, insofar as one dead cow is better than two, animal slaughter will continue to be a massive, cruel industry with an immense environmental impact.
Those ethical concerns bring up an underlying question animal rights advocates will have to confront: What does it take for meat to be “clean?” For vegans such as Sanbonmatsu, who believe in animal personhood and the absolute equality of animals and humans, there is no scenario where that is the case.
For others, the cleanest cultivated meat would be a product created without harming animals at all, but even this is proving to be a quixotic goal, as cultivated meat companies struggle to make their products without animal-derived ingredients. Cultivated meat companies are also taking funding from conventional meat companies like Tyson and Cargill, some of the world’s biggest perpetrators of animal suffering.
It might still be that the current fastest way to dramatically limit animal suffering is through embracing cultured meat companies while putting the total abolition of animal exploitation on the back burner.
Deeper ethical questions aside, it is undeniable that some advocates… are working to develop cultivated meat with the aspiration, however unlikely, of ending factory farming and conventional meat consumption. SOURCE…
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