Fund Cultured-Meat Research

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BY JON HOCHSCHARTNER 
Crossposted with Animal People Forum

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Amidst all the suffering of the human world, there's an ongoing tragedy of incomprehensible scale that we choose to ignore. I'm talking about what we do to animals. We kill billions and billions of them for food every year. These sentient beings are raised in the most torturous conditions imaginable, before meeting their end on a mechanized slaughter-line.

It's a moral crime with which there are few parallels in history. Most of us know there's something wrong with our treatment of animals, but we try not to think about it —burying such concern deep in the back of our mind. We dismiss our compassion as misplaced sentimentality and create elaborate, frequently-unconscious rationales for why we should ignore it.

On an individual level, acknowledging nonhuman suffering seems to require too much. It means eating unfamiliar foods and distancing oneself from the broader, meat-eating culture. Similarly, on a societal level, the cost of recognizing the harm we do to animals feels too high. It means reconstructing large sections of our economy which are dependent on nonhuman exploitation.

What many are not aware of is an emerging technology that will make aligning our values and actions easier. Cultured meat is grown from animal cells without slaughtering nonhumans. It has the potential to remove unimaginable misery from our food system with little to no sacrifice on our part. In some ways, this sounds too good to be true, like promises on a late-night infomercial. But the science is real.

Dr. Mark Post created the first cultured-beef hamburger in 2013. It cost a whopping $280,000. Soon he thinks that price could be reduced to $10. Still, more research is required to make cultured meat economically competitive. This is too important to leave to the private sector. We need federal funding for cultured-meat development.

 

The Congressional Animal Protection Caucus has more than 130 members. It's a bipartisan group dedicated to improving the welfare of nonhumans. This should be their top priority. Don't get me wrong. Eliminating shark-fin sales and horse soring are important goals, but they would affect a ludicrously small number of animals compared to bringing cultured meat to market.

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Similarly, the Humane Society Legislative Fund is the premier lobbying organization of its kind. So far as I'm aware, their scorecards don't ask senators or representatives whether they would support funding for cultured-meat research. Not only should this question be asked, it should be weighted far more heavily than a legislator's position on other issues.

 

Besides the animal-welfare benefits conferred by cultured-meat research, there would be significant improvements to the environment and human health. As many are now learning, animal agriculture is a leading contributor to climate change. Additionally, it's the root cause of many zoonotic diseases, like the one currently spreading across the Earth.

 

Readers should demand their legislators fund cultured-meat research. Similarly, if readers support a lobbying group for animals, they should insist the organization prioritize legislation to that effect. Again, this isn't to say other animal issues aren't important, just that this one is so much more so. Cultured meat could save billions of nonhuman lives every year.

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