I want I got here to veganism by way of an epiphany about the precise to personhood of animals, or recognition of the environmental hurt that animal farming causes. But I didn’t. What turned me vegan was an evening of vomiting introduced on by undercooked ostrich. It was Glastonbury Festival, 2019. Being 21, hungover, and hungry, I believed I’d get a snack from the one vendor on the pageant and not using a queue. Later, whereas crouched in a portaloo batting away hallucinations of ostrich slaughter, I vowed by no means to eat meat once more.

Today, I eat the identical food regimen as many vegans. My food regimen is outlined by eager to keep away from animal struggling and harm to the atmosphere however, not like some vegans, I don’t dislike meat. I do know that if I tasted salmon once more my tastebuds would explode with pleasure, however I abstain as a result of I don’t assume my proper to life trumps that of one other animal. Believe me, I need to eat meat once more. But I received’t.

That is, I received’t eat meat from an animal who has been alive. When I found that lab-grown meat had been declared safe to eat by the US Food and Drug Administration, I used to be overjoyed. Meat, grown like a plant, with no struggling concerned … Immediately I used to be imagining future Christmas dinners: lab-grown turkey with cranberry sauce on the aspect. 

But after I introduced my pleasure to my vegan buddies, they recoiled. Everyone felt grossed out. Ella Marshall, deputy trademark supervisor of the Vegan Society, the world’s oldest vegan affiliation, informed me in an e mail that “we cannot officially support cultivated meat as animals are still used in its production […] we would not be able to register such products with the Vegan Trademark.”

I had been naive in considering that vegans would embrace cultured meat. Veganism is a broad church, stuffed with varied interpretations. Accordingly, as lab-grown meat turns into obtainable as an inexpensive, sustainable type of protein that doesn’t require animal struggling, veganism will face an identification disaster. Conflict will come up between vegans whose philosophy is outlined by the easy avoidance of animal merchandise and people who imagine in a extra radical restructuring of our relationship with the animal world. 

Ultimately, arguments towards cultured meat may hamper the progress of animal liberation. Vegans mustn’t allow this. If we wish to see an finish to animal exploitation, it’s our ethical responsibility to name lab-grown meat vegan, even when it unnerves us.   

If you learn science fiction, the concept of lab-grown meat may not appear so unusual. Writers from Philip Okay. Dick to Douglas Adams have explored the know-how. But how, in actual life, does it work? 

To domesticate meat entails taking stem cells from an animal to develop inside bioreactors. Though these biopsies are invasive, the method is much less painful than lots of the procedures an animal would possibly endure throughout its lifetime on a farm, and, importantly, the method doesn’t contain the animal being killed. In the bioreactors, the cells are fooled into believing they’re nonetheless inside an animal’s physique, as they’re kept in a substrate made up of vitamins like amino acids, nutritional vitamins, carbohydrates, and proteins. Once the meat is grown, the product is harvested and processed into no matter type the producers want to promote. Since the first $375,000 burger was eaten in 2013, manufacturing prices have gone down. Though nonetheless costly in comparison with conventionally farmed meat, the drop in price is radical, and set to proceed. Eventually lab-grown meat may become more affordable than historically farmed animals.

For vegans, there ought to be loads to like about this new know-how. Its potential to cut back all the pieces from animal struggling to greenhouse gasoline emissions make the know-how, if not revolutionary, not less than a great tool within the struggle towards local weather change.