The Promise And Ethics Of Using Muscle Cells To Make Food

This philosophical essay discusses the ethical framework in which scientists and animal advocates regard current research into, and the potential development of, in vitro meat (IVM) production. The author incorporates quotes from interviews with 39 individuals who were scientists involved in IVM-related research or advocates who have supported IVM technology. While most interviewees awarded some degree of preferability to IVM production over current factory farming practices, their motivations for being involved in this area varied. The author concludes that ethical boundary-work concerning IVM production is complex and under development, as is the IVM research itself.

[Abstract excerpted from original source.]

“Over the last decade, several clusters of scientists have been using animal cells in an attempt to grow meat. Known as in vitro, or cultured, meat, the technology involves tissue engineering muscle cells for potential consumption as food. Those supporting the technology articulate a diversity of potential benefits in producing meat in this way, which include environmental-, health-, innovation-, and animal-welfare-related benefits. This essay reports on interviews with scientists and animal activists involved in making and promoting in vitro meat (IVM). While the technology remains in its infancy, its promotion has assertively been pursued with a set of promissory narratives designed to enroll potential funders, commercial investors, and consumers. The essay explores the ethical boundary-work—the drawing of boundaries around what constitutes ethical scientific practice—pursued in the creation of socio-technical expectations around IVM. In particular, it focuses on the emergence of an animal-libratory promissory narrative by exploring how ethically correct practice toward animals is constructed and used to underpin notions of what IVM is and what it can do. The key contributions of the essay are to provide a detailed analysis of the situated ethics of IVM, and to make explicit the relatedness among ethics, promise, and ontology.”