The Franken-flesh Follies, aka Lab-created ("cultivated") Meat

After yet another email from a supposedly pro-veg group effusing about lab-created "meat", I really need to address this topic, as it's one I feel strongly about.

Let's acknowledge some realities: "Cultivated meat" a is lab-created, genetically modified product. It is grown with actual animal cells, so it is not vegan or even vegetarian, for that matter. The fans of this who say it will "save animals" act as if this were the only alternative to animal products - and that's not remotely the case.

 

 Plant-based protein, including plant-based analogs to people's favorite meat items, are available virtually everywhere. There are a ton of these products, and most of them are delicious. Many of these are non-GM products, and some are even organic -yay! They didn't originate in the lab.

Lab-created meats are hugely expensive products to develop, and many in this industry will never see a profit. According to a piece in Forbes, "To produce lab-grown meat, manufacturers use what’s called a bioreactor — the same machinery drug companies use to make vaccines. They’re expensive and have long waitlists. Also costly is construction of the factories in which to put the bioreactors. Good Meat CEO Josh Tetrick says a facility able to produce 30 million pounds of cultivated meat would cost as much as $650 million." 

 

As you might guess, all this is extremely energy intensive. Possibly on the scale of (or exceeding) the livestock industry, depending on whose figures you look at.

 

Who is profiting, or at least planning to profit, from this lab-created "meat"? Clearly it cost billions to develop. Why lab-created meat instead of plant protein? And who are the elites investing in this? Bill I-Promote-GMOs-Worldwide Gates, for one. Head honchos at multi-national conglomerates and celebrity chefs for another. Patents are being applied for, presumably being granted. One application is "to manufacture skeletal muscle for dietary consumption". 

And the implication of that is beyond the scope of this little post.

 

And perhaps WHY would be another pertinent question. Are we to believe that these billionaires and huge multinational corporations are driven by altruistic fervor? We already know they don't give a damn about animal suffering, and they certainly don't care about the unknown effects of genetically modified organisms on human health, the environment, and agriculture as we've known it. Do they believe this technology will be profitable at some point in the future? Why are they sinking billions into this, as opposed to converting livestock operations to the higher protein plant crops? Especially since some of these investors are already in the livestock business.

If you are vegan or vegetarian who is thinking the "saving animals" argument makes sense, please consider the following: The vast majority of people are very unlikely to be interested in buying or eating lab-created flesh products. That sounds about as appealing to most people as eating cricket protein (another food novelty, which is currently available in natural foods markets).

One of my concerns around this type of product is that it blurs the line between plant-based protein products and "fake meat", a term already widely used by meat eaters to describe protein products that aren't carcass-based. Some vegans and vegetarians have contributed to this misconception themselves by using terms like fake meat. This has not been helpful.  

To many consumers, it's ALL fake meat, so in that sense the addition of lab-created, genetically engineered flesh foods may actually harm the plant-based protein market.

Fortunately, millions of people do have an awareness that plant-based versions of popular meat products are available, and that their local grocery stores usually have them. When their veg relative stays over, they already know they can pick up some Gardein Breakfast patties, Morning star Farms patties, etc.  Or when they go out with veg friends, they already know that their friends can get a Beyond Burger, or maybe a Sweet Earth burger at Ruby Tuesdays, etc.

 

It's not like anyone has been sitting around waiting for lab-created meat: "Yay, finally we have an alternative to animal flesh!" Nope.

Plant-based proteins have a fraction of the energy footprint that genetically modified lab-meat does, and they are "no-kill" products. So I'm wondering why some in the veg  community are hailing lab-created "meat" as some sort of triumph.  And what's in it for the supposedly vegan-ish animal rights groups online which promote this stuff continually? Especially since really tasty plant-based "meat"/protein products already exist and are available pretty much everywhere. What is their agenda here? There is some reason they're promoting this, and whatever that reason is, it doesn't feel animal-centered to me.

 

My current sense of things is that lab-created flesh food is not helping veganism or animal rights at all, and may in fact be hurting the cause - many people are going to be associating these bizarre sounding lab-meat products with plant-based protein products, and possibly be more likely to reject all of it.

There's No Such Thing as an Ex-Vegan

There's some confusion on social and mainstream media. Apparently about quite a number of things, but in particular about what a vegan is, and what veganism is all about. When a celebrity (or what passes for one) announces that s/he is now an ex-vegan, social media trumpets that as if it's somehow significant, or has relevance to the reality of veganism.

Veganism is not an "identity" that one selects as part of their social persona. It's not about virtue signaling, or positioning oneself as trendy or hip. It has nothing to do with "wokeness", no matter how much the socially pious pretend otherwise.

Veganism is a paradigm, an ethical framework, one that rejects speciesism. It’s about avoiding harm to other sentient beings in all the ways that are under one’s control. While the term Vegan is a 20th century development, the ethical framework it describes is thousands of years old.

is

                         Speciesism is no more rational than racism or sexism

  

When someone really sees, finally - really gets the cruelty, the torment, the horrific brutality we inflict on other living, breathing, feeling beings for trivial reasons of taste, habit, and convenience, there's no going back. Once you really get it you are changed forever. Therefore, there is no such things as an "ex-vegan". That person was never vegan to begin with. They just ate plant-based for awhile. And veganism is about more than food choices.

It's about choosing the non-leather shoes. It's about not buying products that were tested on animals whenever that’s possible. It’s about not wearing other animals. It’s about not trashing the habitat of other animals with toxic chemicals, your garbage, or your 4WD vehicle. It’s about buying the upholstered furniture rather than the chair made from dead animals. And this is actually simple once you get it. 

For me, veganism is a response to life. A response that affirms life, and the connection that exists between all life.

It's a response to the grotesque cruelty and misery of Industrial Ag, and the profit-at-all-costs mentality of laissez-faire capitalism. It's a response to the mindless, unexamined tenets of culture, the assumptions inherent in the group-think dynamic.

It's a response to antiquated and patriarchal notions of entitlement.

And possibly above all, it's a response that affirms the possibility of higher levels of consciousness and the ability to evolve and transcend.

Veganism is a response that says Yes: Yes to awareness, yes to compassion, yes to the earth, yes to the ability to choose non-violence over the limited, myopic selfishness and grasping of commercial culture and its endless programming.

This response is a refuge. An ethical and spiritual framework that provides shelter from the deluge of cultural and governmental derangement raining down on us daily. It's an always-accessible touchstone that can't be stripped away. It's a freedom, a profoundly essential one - the freedom to evolve beyond one's programming. This includes the freedom to decline participation, to stand up in the middle of moribund custom and say, "I'm not participating in this".

I refuse to be the reason why living, conscious, complex beings suffer horrendously cruel lives and brutal, agonizing deaths. I can't control what goes on "out there", but I can control what goes on "in here", and what I choose to participate in. 

Many people erroneously believe that there's no point in adopting veganism because animal exploitation is ubiquitous, and so entrenched in our culture, but real change has always started with a limited number of people. As Margaret Mead said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has".                

Doing no harm starts with the fork, and that begins with us, as individuals. 

 

 If you would like a relatively quick overview of why vegan, I suggest starting with the documentaries Earthlings and Dominion. Dominion is also a powerful book by Matthew Scully. Here's some more information:

 

 My sister told me, "it's a brand new chapter of life for us", as we hugged goodbye. Her vehicle was packed to the top with the last remaining items she'd retrieved, before we did a final walk-through and locked the house. "Definitely for you", I replied. She looked at me intently and said, "it is for you, too".

The house, my parents' house, was where she'd lived for the better part of the last decade, caring for my dad after my mom died of Alzheimer's in a memory care facility. It was the house mom and dad chose together in the early 90's, the one in which they had hoped to share a lengthy retirement together, doing the things they loved. A house in the mountains, on a hilly acre of woods, surrounded by the birds and wildlife they loved to watch, feed, and talk about.

The house was full of their energy, the things they treasured; pictures of family, antiques made or owned by long-dead ancestors, a mind-boggling variety of books, lots of flowering plants in the windows. They both loved being in the living room and looking out the big picture window, watching the incredible variety of birds that visited an eccentric-but-charming array of feeders they'd positioned near that window. Along with the white squirrels, which dad had a love-hate relationship with, and the deer and raccoons, who they also fed.

After my mom was gone, that's where my dad spent most of his time. Especially as he gradually became less ambulatory, and his multiple car wrecks caused us to insist that he stop driving.  If it hadn't been for my newly-widowed sister moving in there to manage the household (and later his care), dad never would've had the gift of being able to remain there. I was 30 minutes away, working full-time, and trying to handle my own small organic fruit farm. My brother, in TN.

The living room with the big view of the natural world that he loved so much was also where he died. Several feet from the window, in a rented hospital bed that hospice had ordered. He was beyond seeing out the window at that point, but part of him knew where he was, knew that family was there with him.

And this treasured home of my parents is what we spent the past 2 and a half painful, chaotic months trying to clear out. Daily difficult decisions about what to keep, what to donate, the mountain of family photos spanning generations, what to shred, what could be sold to satisfy the probate court, dealing with the horrendous consequences of an incompetent and/or corrupt estate lawyer and a hopelessly mangled estate plan. But that's a story for another day.

The house stands empty now, ready to be sold. Bare walls, bare windows, rooms that echo. It's only in my mind that the gentle sound of my mother's laughter, and my dad's booming hello reverberates. Only in my mind do I see the fireplace burning, family holiday gatherings full of amazing homemade goodies, the beautifully decorated Christmas trees that my dad took so much pride and pleasure in. And later, his shaky, shuffling steps with a cane, on the slow trek to the kitchen table.

In reality, it's all gone. All that's here is a startlingly empty house. And silence. 

So I go home to my own little sanctuary and my own silence, accompanied as usual by the multiple losses in my own life these past few months. Struggling to keep moving forward, to focus on the right now, just breathing, and putting one foot in front of the other. It's a new chapter, right?