Laboratory grown meat

A few days ago, the SA Vegan Society was approached by a journalist writing an article on meat grown in labs and asked for our opinion on the matter in general but specifically:

- whether we  think this is an ethically acceptable alternative to animal meat? and;

- whether vegans and vegetarians would be prepared to eat this and still qualify as vegans/vegetarians?

We discussed the issue at length and this is our response:

The Vegan Society has a few thoughts to consider with regards to meat grown in laboratories;

While it may diminish animal suffering and be engineered to be healthier (e.g., lower cholesterol), meat grown in a laboratory is still problematic from an abolitionist approach as it would use tissue cultures from animals anyway. Furthermore, it reinforces the idea that meat is a natural part of a human diet and this likely means that 'real' meat will be seen as a desirable luxury item. Vat culture meat will undoubtedly become 'poor person's meat'.

Apart from all this, the industry will likely employ various insufficiently tested GM technologies which will potentially negate all health benefits, thus also creating a class divide between those who can afford 'organic real meat' and those who have to consume vat grown GM 'meat'.

Also, it doesn't seem to be at all commercially viable yet, and there is little concrete evidence available as to its ecological footprint in terms of substrate production, water and energy use, processing requirements, etc.

Initially, vat meat grown in a laboratory could very well be considered more ethical than imprisoning, torturing and slaughtering billions of sentient creatures to ingest. When you look at the bigger picture though, the truth is that the concept of genetically growing something resembling the dead flesh of another being is far from 'ethical'. Imagine if we could genetically grow human flesh in laboratories - would we then condone cannibalism? It would be 'ethical' cannibalism perhaps, but cannibalism nonetheless.

There are also health issues to consider. Endless amounts of research show that there are health risks involved in following a diet based on flesh. Being Vegan is primarily about living a lifestyle which does not exploit others and has been proven to be a well balanced and healthy way of living. When food is artificially produced in a laboratory, risks go up exponentially (aspartame vs sugar, anyone...?)  It has been proven over and over again that we do not need meat to lead healthy lives, so really, what's the point? Do people really have such little control over their own sensory systems that they simply 'cannot live' without the taste of something so cruel? Is the only solution to let them have it without feeling guilty?

We are all for promoting living more naturally. Concepts such as this should make people uncomfortable as it so clearly highlights human inability to see the bigger picture. It's a clear example of how we simply refuse to see that what we are doing (exploiting the planet, animals and each other) might be wrong. We simply try to implement new solutions to rid us of the symptoms of the old solutions, which themselves were created to rid us of symptoms of problems we created in the first place!

Half the world is dying of malnutrition, human slavery is alive and well, we're very quickly killing off all life in the oceans, we're torturing and killing millions upon millions of animals every year for our own (perceived) pleasure and vanity, yet people worry about nonsense like 'could vegetarians eat laboratory produced meat?'.

There are real, more valid problems to be tackled, at root level. The real answer is that we don't need artificial meat to stop killing non-human animals. We simply need to stop killing non-human (and human, for that matter) animals...not making strange corpse-resembling proteins in laboratories.