There is a common thread amongst surveyors of technology that manages to unite them all despite differences in ideology and identity – we have very little object, or in this case, ‘news’ permanence. We forget developments in technology just as quickly as we read the articles. This has been the case with solar-powered generators (something that most people seemingly forgot about only to be reminded of once more once it had reached mainstream media a few months back), developments in drone technology that makes them accurate and stable enough to serve in armies across the world, and of course, in what’s relevant to the topic at hand, lab-grown meat. I’m sure many of you may have picked up on the phenomenon of lab-grown meat a few years before from the miscellaneous articles lining the shelves of convenience stores and supermarkets alike, ruminated for five minutes on the massive implications, and forgot completely about it until seeing the title above. I don’t altogether blame you for it, surprisingly.
Lab-grown meat years ago was incredibly out of reach for commoners. Its price was nothing short of obnoxious (around $300k for a single patty produced by a Dutch scientist back in 2013. This “achievement” was and was thus seen as nothing more than a vain display of technical gene-spicing (however inaccurate that may be) expertise that provides little to nothing to the grand scheme of actually solving the unfortunately very real climate bushwacking and moral depressions caused by the meat industry at large (The meat industry alone is responsible for around 17% of all of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions, coming from a horrific mixture of animal gases and massive machines that wouldn’t look out of place out of a 90s horror flick) – and that was the impression left to many upon reading of the news all those years ago.
Fortunately for the bored and inattentive, there hasn’t been a single instance of technological progress wherein it has proven itself completely resistant to the waves of change – and change it did. From the sky-high prices effectively barring all but the elite from ever having a taste to the much more affordable (though arguably still overpriced) burgers costing upwards of 15 dollars from restaurants in Singapore, developments in the lab-grown industry had effectively reduced costs thousands of times per burger, a trend that came to be once the original tech became more widespread, and results became more consistent across labs. It’s fascinating to watch as it all becomes an actual option for those unwilling to take part in the traditional meat industry.
Unfortunately for those in parts of America looking forward to a meat-industry-free future, such innovations have proven too competitive, potentially harming the large and influential traditional meat industries there. This confirms two things: That lab-grown meat is mature enough to be both sold somewhat commercially and at a cheap enough price threaten the longevity of the meat industry, and that, despite the good that this could potentially do, it is being challenged on account of that alone. Southern states like Tennessee have legislated major fines to those selling cell-cultured meat upwards of one million dollars in an act of defiance against the rising technology. Tennessee wasn’t the only state acting up. According to a report in Vox, “Florida state Rep. Tyler Sirois, another Republican who introduced a similar bill late last year, stated a different — and perhaps more honest — motivation for banning cell-cultivated meat: to protect the state’s farmers from competition. ‘Farming and cattle are incredibly important industries to Florida,’ Sirois said in an interview with Politico in November.”
Some have even claimed the very practice of producing meat from cells to be an affront to nature—despite humanity’s current state being so much more of a mutation of “nature’s interests” than a new piece of technology that builds from predetermined principles of cellular reproduction could ever hope to be.
Strangely, however, this isn’t the first time politics revolving around meat have managed to cause real damage to nascent technologies. Meat and protein substitutes had always been under fire from politicians unwilling to fully shift from one to another in fear of damaging large industries. It is then somewhat fortunate that only a few states in America have passed this bill, and they will stand as constant reminders of how ever-prevalent ties with politics and economics technologies that, to most of us, are only positive additions to our lives and the ecosystems of the planet on which we reside can be.
Recommended Reading:
Inside the effort to cut the cost of cultivated meat (acs.org).