As the global population continues to rise and wealthier lifestyles drive up meat consumption, the traditional methods of meat production are increasingly scrutinized for their public health risks and ethical concerns. Factory farming, a prevalent method of meat production, is linked to antibiotic resistance and the spread of zoonotic diseases, while also raising significant animal welfare issues. In response to these challenges, cultured meat—also known as synthetic or clean meat—emerges as a promising alternative. This article delves into the myriad benefits of cultured meat, such as its potential to mitigate public health risks and alleviate animal suffering, and explores effective strategies to foster public acceptance and adoption of this innovative food source. By addressing mental barriers like disgust and perceived unnaturalness, and advocating for the use of social norms rather than coercive laws, the transition to cultured meat can be facilitated. This shift not only promises a more ethical and sustainable future for meat consumption but also underscores the importance of collective action in achieving these goals.
Summary By: Emma Alcyone | Original Study By: Anomaly, J., Browning, H., Fleischman, D., & Veit, W. (2023). | Published: July 2, 2024
Cultured meat can provide significant public health benefits and reduce animal suffering. How can the public be influenced to adopt it?
Synthetic meat, often referred to as “cultured” or “clean” meat, reduces the public health risks associated with factory farming, such as antibiotic resistance and diseases from animals like influenza and coronavirus. It also avoids animal cruelty in its production. This article explores strategies to overcome consumers’ mental barriers such as disgust and perceived unnaturalness. It describes the transition from traditional animal farming to cultured meat as a collective action problem, advocating for the use of social norms over coercive laws to make this change.
Despite the increase of vegetarianism and veganism in Western countries, global meat consumption continues to increase. This isn’t just due to population growth; wealthier individuals typically eat more meat. For example, the paper notes that the average person in China in 2010 ate four times as much meat as they did in the 1970s. Because of this increased demand worldwide, the use of factory farms has continued to grow.
Factory farms make producing animals for food much cheaper, overshadowing concerns about its ethics, especially in developing countries. Because animals are so closely packed together in factory farms, farmers need to use high amounts of antibiotics to keep them from getting sick. This reliance on antibiotics increases the risk of antibiotic resistance and zoonotic diseases, which are diseases that spread from animals to humans. There is always a risk of zoonotic disease when using animals for food, but factory farming makes this risk more intense.
While some Western nations are creating regulations to lower antibiotic use, its usage is still rapidly increasing in places like China, India, and North Africa. These public health risks contrast with the potential benefits of clean meat production. Clean meat presents an alternative that decreases the transmission of disease.
The welfare of animals in agriculture, particularly in factory farming, brings up major ethical concerns. Animal agriculture practices can inflict extreme pain and suffering on animals, even in well-managed facilities. While some advocate for more humane farming practices, many such practices are not realistic on a larger scale. The act of slaughter also raises moral concerns as it shortens animals’ lives and takes away future opportunities for their pleasure. Cultured meat offers a solution by providing meat without the ethical concerns that come with traditional farming methods.
There is a challenge of overcoming the “disgust factor” when introducing clean meat to the public. Disgust evolved to help humans decide what was safe to eat, but it’s also influenced by social norms. Food preferences form at an early age and are usually based on the foods we’ve been exposed to. As such, people’s familiarity with conventional meat makes it more acceptable to them than a cultured version. One idea the authors present is the use of video material in marketing campaigns to highlight the disgusting features of factory farming.
The taste of cultured meat is also important as people often care more about what is delicious than what is moral. Additionally, the relation of “natural” with “good” needs to be tackled. Highlighting the ethical problems and pathogenic risk within animal farming could address this.
The article sees the widespread adoption of cultured meat as a collective action problem. A collective action problem happens when a group’s interest is different from an individual’s interest. Due to public health concerns, it would be in the public’s interest to start consuming lab-grown meat. However, it’s difficult for individual consumers to make the connection to public health and understand the impact of their choices. They also have to overcome their disgust factor and think about the external costs of their eating habits. It’s difficult for people to change their minds on their own, but they are easily influenced by the people around them and those they look up to. The authors of the study are against coercive laws but suggest that public opinion could be swayed by information, marketing, and influential people adopting cultured meat.
While cultured meat addresses public health risks and ethical concerns, it is difficult to get the public to overcome their disgust and make the connection between their individual choices and society as a whole. To overcome disgust, this article suggests that consumers become more familiar with clean meat’s safety and the issues with traditional meat production. They suggest that it’s also easier to influence the public to consume lab-grown meat through marketing and the changing of social norms, rather than trying to influence consumers one at a time.
Notice: This content was initially published on Faunalytics.org and may not necessarily reflect the views of the Humane Foundation.