Emerging Profiles for Cultured Meat; Ethics through and as Design - PubMed (original) (raw)

Emerging Profiles for Cultured Meat; Ethics through and as Design

Cor van der Weele et al. Animals (Basel). 2013.

Abstract

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.

Keywords: animal welfare; design; ethics; in vitro meat; meat; stem cells; sustainable consumption; tissue engineering.

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Figures

Figure 1

Figure 1

First associations: a steak in an Erlenmeyer flask.

Figure 2

Figure 2

Eindhoven student designs of cultured meat.

References

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    1. Researchers tend to opt for “cultured meat” as it may promote associations with cultivation and culture rather than laboratories and technology. The name is a challenge in many ways. For example, one of our anonymous reviewers pointed out that the term ‘meat’ has been argued by Carol Adams in her book ‘The sexual politics of meat’ to function as a noun which renders abstract and absent the individual lives of concrete animals who are turned into ‘meat’. This could be taken to imply that the notion of in vitro meat shares in, or even intensifies, the understanding of meat as something dissociated from living beings. The reviewer argued that it may be appropriate to change the term to ‘synthetic flesh’ or to acknowledge that the term ‘meat’ may be problematic. We opt for the latter. Interestingly, our native language (Dutch) makes no difference between flesh and meat—the word for both is “vlees”.
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