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What is the vegan position on lab grown meat?
I once told a vegan classmate I would eat lab meat and she thought I meant Labrador meat.
That's vegan depending on how annoying the lab is
(Non-Annoying) Animal Liberation Front
Lol, it's funny how people categorize acceptable and unacceptable meat.
No actual vegan thinks any meat from a murdered animal is acceptable, it's the exploitation and killing that's the issue. They are not a vegan if they do. If you weren't saying otherwise, then yes I agree, only I wouldn't call it funny so much as pathetic how many people categorize which animals are acceptable and which aren't acceptable to be made into meat.
Maybe I was being too glib.
I just think of how arbitrary and shallow the reasoning is. It's funny in that it's so ridiculous, I can't help but laugh when someone tries to justify why eating one animal is okay, but then say that it's more wrong to eat a horse.
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I didn't know that, that clarifies things for me thanks.
You definitely do you… as an omnivore I look forward to a more ethical way to eat my diet. Vegans have some good points, and I hope seeing society move toward ethical meat gives them hope the world is getting better.
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it's more ethical in the way that pulling the lever on the trolley is ethical. Feel free to blow up the entirety of animal agriculture instead, I'd do some jury nullification.
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They can't reproduce fetal bovine serum. It's a byproduct of the cow killing industry, so every lab-grown meat product uses the processed blood of a real cow.
Not yet, but there's a few alternatives in the R&D pipeline. I'd think the economics of lab grown meat probably don't make sense until a decent substitute is found, because it's so expensive. A small bottle was like $500 when I was doing lab work.
Q
FBS is the growing medium. The cell lines (the stuff that becomes meat) is reproduced, so very few cells need to be taken from animals. For growing chicken meat for example, the cells can be taken from their eggs, a live donor (well, chickens can't consent so I guess not a donor), or a corpse. Also, it turns out there are techniques that use alternative media, so idk give it a decade.
If it's not hurting animals I would think positive?
My take (as a vegan):
- Most lab grown meat still has animal product input so it's not vegan
- In the event that they replace that part of the production, there's still a good chance it gets tested on animals to get GRAS (generally recognized as safe) certification from the FDA. I don't eat e.g. Impossible or Just, both of which tested their food on animals to get the certification.
- If there existed a way of synthesizing meat that didn't have animal products as input and was never tested on animals, I'd be very excited about it from the perspective of getting omnis to stop killing animals for their flesh or secretions. I probably wouldn't eat it because of the ick factor, plus health reasons, but I think it would be vegan.
I also don't think that waiting for lab grown meat before going vegan is a morally defensible position in general.
Most ethical vegans wouldn't even have an issue with someone eating real meat sourced from a trash can. I personally wouldn't be able to eat it because I've never eaten meat in my life but I wouldn't think any less of someone for eating meat that was destined for the landfill because it doesn't contribute to the suffering of any animal.
If you're comparing lab meat to trash meat because lab meat can be made with byproducts, the issue is that every byproduct reinforces the main one. Every part of an animal the animal ag industry is able to use means more profit for them, which justifies their continued existence, since now their operating costs are subsidized by selling off other parts of the animal to companies for leather goods, lab meat, etc.
They don't care what anyone does with trash meat insofar as it doesn't impact their profits. I don't honestly know what you're talking about with using meat byproducts to make cultured meat because I've never been that hyped about the process, mainly because I don't see it becoming profitable and sustainable for some time, when we already have tasty vegan food today.
You posted in response to someone asking about vegan stances on lab meat, so I assumed you were making some sort of comparison.
I just meant to say that being vegan only implies that you care about minimizing suffering, which means sourcing meat by some means that doesn't result in additional suffering of any animal (be it trash meat, ethical bioreactor, or star trek replicator) wouldn't be an issue.
Oh for sure, that makes sense.
In general, the more proximal to R&D, the less acceptable it is to vegans.
At these early stages, the research involves animal exploitation and killing to product the initial cells. Some of the production processes do, too. A stalwart vegan might avoid those products as a result.
Eventually, there will probably be companies and production processes that do neither and the connection to harm will be, at least psychologically, more diffuse. More vegans will be cool with it over time until none of them care outside of the issues re: normalizing meat consumption.
There are confounding factors but that's the trend.