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The way the technology is being developed and marketed virtually ensures the perpetuation of the conventional meat industry, including meat from animals raised in intensive confinement (factory farms).
"It Got Away" By
Sue Coe
Advocates for CM ("Clean Meat," or cellular or laboratory-cultivated
flesh), predict that, as the costs of raising live animals for meat
skyrocket, and as Big Meat companies like Tyson, Perdue, Smithfield,
Cargill, etc., invest in synthesized animal meats, the latter will become
cheaper and take up an ever growing share of the newly-dubbed "protein"
market. Over time, the theory goes, CM will actually replace meat from
animals raised on factory farms, thus sparing countless billions of animals
terrible suffering.
But Clean Meat won't end animal agriculture (see
Clean Meat Won't Significantly Reduce the Number of Animals Now Being Killed). It won't even shut down factory farms. Because it isn't meant
to. On the contrary, the way the technology is being developed and marketed
virtually ensures the perpetuation of the conventional meat industry,
including meat from animals raised in intensive confinement (factory farms).
According to an article entitled, "How Alternative Proteins Can Support
Animal Agriculture," in Tri-State Livestock News, Renée A. Vassilos, an
Agricultural Economist with Banyan Innovation Group, was to relay the
following good news to other leaders in the meat industry when they met at
the April 2019 National Institute for Animal Agriculture conference:
"Her presentation, titled How Alternative Proteins Can Support the Animal
Agriculture Industry [will focus] on how the newest, most touted technology
innovation, alternative proteins — from insects to legumes to cell cultures
— are not something to view as a replacement for animal proteins, but just
another competitor in a huge global protein market."[See
"How Alternative Proteins Can Support the Animal Agriculture Industry,"
Tri-State Livestock News, March 19, 2019]
The reason the Clean Meat lobby's strategy won't work is chiefly due to its
reliance on Big Meat to make the whole scheme work. By the admission of its
leading proponents, Clean Meat will only begin replacing meat from
factory-farmed animals if CM products are of high quality and are able to be
produced en masse as cheaply as meat products derived from animals reared in
factory farms. Once this happens, it would then be left to the big meat
companies to move the products. The meat companies, the thinking goes, are
already in the business of marketing meat, and if anyone can make Clean Meat
acceptable to the public, it's them. Only they already have the marketing
prowess, manufacturing capability, name recognition, distribution chains,
and gargantuan advertising budgets needed to reengineer the public's
consumption habits. The meat economy is like an ocean liner steaming towards
an ice field, and only the powerful engines of the animal industry, the
thinking goes, can slow its momentum and put it into reverse.
With this strategy in mind, the Good Food Institute, New Crop Capital, Clear
Current Capital, and other key players in the Clean Meat lobby have sought,
and won, investment money from factory farming behemoths. Tyson, for
example, has invested in the Clean Meat start-ups, Memphis Meats and Future
Meats. PHW-Gruppe Lohmann & Co., one of the largest poultry producers in
Europe (the company kills 350 million chickens every year) has invested in
Supermeats. And so on. The fly in this ointment, however, is Big Meat
itself, which cannot be entrusted with the future fate of hundreds of
billions of animals. Unfortunately, while key players in Big Meat have
indeed begun investing in both vegan and CM products, there is right now no
evidence--zero--that these corporate killers of animals are planning to
phase out their animal agriculture operations any time soon--or indeed ever.
On the contrary, their avowed strategy is to invest in CM as a way of
dominating future "protein" markets by offering consumers a wider, more
diverse array of meat products. So eliminating "conventional" meat from
animals raised in intensive confinement is not even on the table. Violence
against animals will continue, only it will be hidden in the skirts of
"consumer choice." As Karen Davis observes, "A dilemma that will likely
arise in future with 'clean meat' versus slaughterhouse meat: certain foods
could be labeled 97% 'clean' meat and 3% 'animal protein'--along the lines
of Paul Shapiro’s Better Meat Co. today, which helps meat companies produce
products labeled, say, 70% plant protein and 30% animal protein."
For agribusiness and animal killers like Cargill and Tyson, investing in
Clean Meat start-ups, as well as in vegan food companies, makes good
business sense for three reasons:
That Big Meat companies in fact have no intention of ending, or even scaling back, their production of meat from living animals can be seen in their recent investment decisions and annual reports to shareholders. Cargill is a good example. The company has said quite clearly that it is interested in Clean Meat as a component of a strategy to expand its reach in the "proteins" market--not as a way of ending its "traditional" farmed animal business. Brian Sikes, Cargill's Protein group leader, explains:
"Our goal is to provide a complete basket of goods to our customers. We will do this by growing our traditional protein business, entering into new proteins and investing in innovative alternatives....At Cargill, we recognize that meat is a core part of consumer diets and central to many cultures and traditions. We believe consumers will continue to choose meat as a protein source, and that is why we are focused on bringing it to their table as sustainably and cost-effectively as we can. Our traditional proteins, as well as new innovations like cultured meats, are both necessary to meet that demand.”
To underscore this strategy, Cargill has meanwhile continued to invest
heavily in its factory farming infrastructure:
"Cargill is committed to growing our protein portfolio. This includes
investing in, and growing, our traditional protein businesses....Our
commitment is reinforced by nearly $600 million in recent investments in
conventional protein in North America alone, including the acquisition of
Five Star Custom Foods, modernization of our turkey hatchery in Virginia and
the conversion of our Columbus, Neb., plant into a cooked meats facility.
Also, CAN’s recent acquisition of Southern States Cooperatives’ animal feed
business and our investment in the NouriTech FeedKind facility in Memphis
further underscores Cargill’s overarching commitment to animal
protein...."[1]
Does that sound like Cargill is planning to wind down its mass extermination
of animals any time soon? If so, why would Cargill sink an additional half a
billion dollars into its factory farming operations? There is simply no
evidence that the meat companies are planning to get out of the business of
exploiting and killing animals. Rather, as the human population continues to
grow, and as demand for meat increases (in no small measure due to the
aggressive marketing campaigns of the meat companies themselves), it will be
necessary for the industry to respond with a variety of products--including
beef, chicken, pork, eggs, fish, and dairy from actual animals, not only or
even primarily meat from cell cultures. Already, Paul Shapiro, author of the
book Clean Meat, is helping companies get a bigger bang for their buck by
mixing plant proteins in with their burgers. His so-called "blended burger"
project is creating plant-meat hybrids that will further blur the boundaries
between vegan and meat products, confusing customers and creating new
opportunities for the meat industry to greenwash their commodities.
A Two-Track Strategy: Catch and Kill (then Dominate the Market)
As part of the strategy to dominate both the vegan/CM market as well as
"traditional" meat markets for years to come, Big Meat--with an assist from
Big Pharma--has been busy quietly buying up almost all of the extant vegan
enterprises on the market:
The push for Clean Meat is merely an extension of Big Meat's strategy dominate the so-called protein market. As Robert Grillo, of Free from Harm, writes:
"My biggest concern with clean meat is that the meat conglomerates buy up the technology and the rights from smaller start ups in an effort to control if and how these products are ever marketed and sold. The worst case scenario would be a 'catch and kill' strategy in which they buy it up only to shelve it, thereby preventing those who would otherwise use it to advance some social, public good." (See Is Clean Meat Easy Prey for Meat Industry Elites?)
Here, the Clean Meat advocate might well ask, Nu? So? Who cares if Big Meat
owns the vegan and CM foods industry? Won't that help expand the market in
alternative foods, thus reducing the number of animals being killed? In
fact, we don't know the answer to that question. What we do know, however,
is that Clean Meat in itself won't end animal agriculture in any of its
present forms, including intensive confinement--not without some
transformation of the public's understanding of what and who
animals are, and why their lives matter.
At best, Clean Meat will help produce a market in which, say, 40 billion
land animals are killed each year, rather than 50 billion. But even that
"optimistic" scenario comes with strings attached, as thick and twisting as
the cables holding up the Brooklyn Bridge.
Given growing human population pressures and rising levels of consumption in
the developing world, the global meat market is expected to expand in coming
years and decades. Some incalculable part of this expansion is naturally
going to be driven by the animal industry itself. And since the latter is
committed to maintaining a diverse portfolio of "protein products"--meat
from farmed animals raised in CAFOs, meat from farmed animals raised
organically and on smaller farms, synthesized or lab-grown meat, vegan
products, and food made from ground-up insects (yes, that's a thing--and
it's being promoted by Bill Gates, one of the backers of Clean Meat)--we
have no way of knowing how many animals are going to continue to be killed
to satisfy the market in meat.
Nor do we know whether the capitalists in control of these new technologies
will ultimately find it more profitable to market inexpensive Clean Meats
(which could compete with meat from factory farms) or only high-end,
"boutique" meat products. Even analysts at the Good Food Institute have
publicly admitted that the technology might chiefly or only be used to
produce high-end meat products, like foie gras or lamb chops. "[Liz] Specht
[of the Good Food Institute] says the clean meat industry might make more of
a foothold for itself by growing high-end cuts of meat such as steak or lamb
chops. Since these cuts have more complex structures, with intricate
arrangements of fat, muscle and connective tissue, they require some kind of
scaffolding to make certain kinds of cells grow in different positions.
Specht even thinks that clean meat could eventually bring the cost down of
what are traditionally more expensive cuts of meat, while plant-based
alternatives flood the lower end of the market."[ee
The Vegetarians Are at the GateS]
Jevons Paradox
Further uncertainty is introduced into this equation by Jevons Paradox.
According to this theory from environmental economics, policies that spur
technological efficiency in resource use can lead to increased consumption
of that very resource, thus cancelling out the gains. For example, people
who buy Priuses may drive more than they did before, since it's now cheaper
to do so (because they spend less money on gas), and also because they
psychologically associate driving their car with "being green." The energy
and environmental savings of driving a hybrid may thus be cancelled out.
Some analyses suggest that it may even better to drive your old gas-guzzling
Chevy into the ground than to junk it for a brand new Prius, because of the
huge amounts of energy and natural resources required to produce such a
complex car.
It is likely that we will see a similar dynamic develop in meat markets, if
the Clean Meat lobby is allowed to have its way. Imagine a future market in
which meat from animals and meat from bioengineering vats both have a role
to play. Rather than trying to convince the public to move steadily towards
plant-based foods, the meat industry is likely to reinforce consumers'
dependency on flesh. This is something, after all, the meat industry that
has worked very hard at for a century to do (and with historically stunning
success: postwar per capita meat consumption in the US grew by 400%). Now,
due to the bad press around the catastrophic ecological effects of animal
agriculture, meat is in crisis, and will be for some time. How, then, can
the animal industry have its traditional meat, and have others eat it, too?
The answer is by continuing to keep people accustomed to high levels of meat
consumption. In developing markets like China, the meat industry is already
working hard to increase per capita meat consumption.
Due to the ecological limits of live animal production, alternative
meats--both plant-based and cellular--are needed to meet rising demand. But
this doesn't necessarily mean that we'll soon be seeing a radical decline in
the number of animals being killed. Suppose, say, that 30% of the human
population replaces much of their farmed animal meat with CM or synthesized
meat. Would that translate into a 30% decline in the number of animals being
killed globally to satisfy the burgeoning meat market? We don't know.
Because population is still growing, and per capita demand for meat--thanks
to Big Meat itself, which invests hundreds of millions of dollars in
advertising for meat--is growing, too. It is entirely possible that the
overall number of land animals being killed will remain the same, if not
grow, in the coming decades. (The prospect for seafood markets is less
clear, since the fisheries industry is exterminating marine life at such a
blistering pace that soon there won't be any more marine animals left to
exploit.)
Ironically, because the Clean Meat lobby is intent "to take ethics off the
table for the consumer," as Bruce Friedrich puts it, we may see a scenario
in which consumers simply broaden their palates, eating Clean Meats
sometimes, CAFO meats some times, so-called "humane" meats other times, and
vegan burgers at still other times. In short, the numbers of animals being
killed may indeed go down. But then it is likely to stabilize, leading to a
perpetuum mobile of suffering, violence, and mass slaughter--forever.
Proponents of Clean Meat like to present themselves as "pragmatists" and
realists, in contrast to supposed the "idealists" and ineffectual moralists
of the animal rights movement. In their telling, even engaging in unethical
forms of research, such as using Bovine Fetal Serum in developing clean
meat, or engaging in animal testing, are acceptable, because "the end
justifies the mean." [See
Matt Reynolds, "The Clean Meat Industry Is Racing To Ditch Its Reliance
on Foetal Blood," Wired, March 20, 2018]But just what is "the end"? Clearly, it is not a future
in which millions and even billions of animals are not brutally killed each
and every year. Nor is it a future in which the human race is asked to
confront its depraved contempt for nonhuman animal life, whether in the
slaughterhouse or in the wild. Instead, it is a future much like the
present.
Utilitarians will argue that if Clean Meat is able to reduce the overall
number of animals being killed, it will have been worth it. Are they right?
Only if we discount the problem of justice. Would a world in which, say,
"only" three million Jews and Roma had died at the hands of the Nazis,
rather than six million, really have been "better"? Only in an abstract
sense. Genocide is by definition a form of singularity, a phenomenon of
horror and injustice that is fundamentally irreducible. To say that three
million Jews dying would have been acceptable, or even "a success," is to
play an intellectual game that demeans the victims of Nazi violence. Had
only a single child been murdered by the Nazis, it would have been
unacceptable.
By the same token, to flippantly argue, as Clean Meat proponents do, that we
have to sacrifice our vision of animal justice in favor of a "success" in
which billions will continue to die, is morally repugnant, at best. At
worst, it is to betray the interests of the countless animals who will
continue to die, year after year. Even the staunchest utilitarian must take
into consideration the lost opportunities of the "road not taken." What do
we lose, what do we risk, in walking away from the abolitionist vision? What
might happen if consumers in the future do not have Clean Meat as an option,
but are made to choose between universal veganism and the certain
destruction of the earth by animal agriculture? If we don't resist Clean
Meat now, we may never know.
Though CM proponents pass lightly over the subject, the technological,
marketing, and cultural hurdles that stand in the way of mass-marketed Clean
Meat remain enormous. Will synthetic flesh become so inexpensive to produce
that it will be able to compete with meat from animals raised factory-farms?
Will Clean Meat taste as good as real meat? We have no way of knowing the
answers to these questions. However, even if CM can be manufactured cheaply
and in high quality some day, the retail price and marketing of CM products
will be determined by the cold calculations of the manufacturers who make
them. So if Tyson, say, decides that it can make more money by marketing
"boutique" synthetic meats to the environmentally conscious, wealthy, Whole
Foods shopper, than by marketing generic products for consumers used to
buying CAFO-produced flesh, then it will do the former. Tens of billions of
animals will still be exploited and killed, even if the Clean Meat market
grows.
The reason Clean Meats are unlikely ever to replace meat from live animals,
including ones confined in factory farms, is because there are very powerful
institutional, economic, and cultural forces in play to ensure that never
happens. And to the extent that the animal advocacy movement is helping to
promote the myth that we need meat, that meat is "natural," and so on, it is
strengthening those very forces.
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