The Bizarre Knee-Jerk Opposition to Lab-Grown Meat

Political polarization around meat may doom billions of extra animals to a life of torture

There are various technical problems surrounding the launch of lab-grown meat. We still do not know how to get it, a non-peer-reviewed preprint of a study found it might be bad for the environment—though there is, of course, dispute of that finding (something not reported by the fanatical news sources touting this alleged repudiation of lab meat), and it could be a few decades away. It’s reasonable to have various practical concerns about how exactly lab meat would work or whether it could work at all without posing serious problems—I’m optimistic that these problems will eventually be worked out, but perhaps one who was really pessimistic would not be. It’s not irrational to be concerned about the practicality of various future technologies.

But then there’s a second strain of concern about lab meat, one that is both more concerning and more concerned. People for some bizarre, impossible-to-articulate reason, think that lab meat is some pernicious, alien force that should be avoided even if it produces cheaper, healthier, and more humane meat than the status quo. And this is almost exclusively a phenomenon on the American right. For example:

(Perhaps in this case there is an explanation of her hatred of lab-grown meat based on the fact that she’s paid by one of its competitors. It’s easier to adopt stupid positions when one is being paid to do so).

We know lab-grown meat is bad because some of the people who support it are cocktail-toting liberals, and anything supported by them must be bad, apparently. This argument is roughly as dumb as opposing eating lettuce because it’s often eaten by people at the world economic forum.

James Melville doesn’t seem to have much of a reason to be against lab-grown meat, but he knows that he is!

One non-peer-reviewed pre-print of a study that does not reflect the current consensus finds that lab-meat might be 25 times worse. Apparently, unconcerned with the replication crisis and uninterested in seeing if this is widely accepted, Tira Cole thinks that this study settles the debate—and proves that lab-grown meat is not about health or the planet but some nefarious globalist plot involving us all living in small pods and being force-fed bugs by Klaus Schwab. She of course ignores differing reports, inconvenient to her narrative. Sam Fenny concludes the same thing based on the same single study—apparently, everyone is the man of one study when it comes to lab meat. Stew Peters declares “Lab Grown Meat Is An ABOMINATION: Transhumanists Play God & PERVERT His Creation.” Heather Dow concurs

But these concerns are totally idiotic. To the extent that one can ascertain a concern at all—beneath fear-mongering and right-wing virtue signaling—it seems to be that lab meat is unnatural. But this is just a bizarre concern—it’s no more unnatural than computers, Iphones, snickers bars, or the factory farms that have come to define modern meat production. Why be concerned about lab meat but not about those?

The primary reason these people oppose lab meat is not based on some deep-seated data-based concern about it; it is instead an irrational paranoia—a vague inarticulable sense that it is plastic, alien, and unnatural. This partly has to do, no doubt, with propaganda from the meat companies, and also with the fact that various left-wing people and globalists have touted the virtues of lab meat, so right-wingers will grope for any excuse, however pathetic, to oppose it (left-wingers would do the same if lab meat were touted by right-wingers—polarization rots our brains).

But this is a disaster. Billions of animals are being tortured in the most horrifying ways imaginable, leading to the worst atrocity in human history, and there’s a solution that could end it. Despite that, a significant segment of the American electorate will not go along with it because it seems weird. If one doesn’t care about morality, I can at least understand wanting to eat meat, but there is no rational case against lab-grown meat, once it can be produced efficiently.

This is perhaps the most lopsided issue in history. We have overwhelming arguments for lab-grown meat—about the environment, human health, and ending the grisly torture chambers that we confine trillions of beings to—and lots of people oppose it for no reason. It’s not just that there’s some consideration against it that’s outweighed—there is no argument given beyond a vague, inarticulable, clearly irrational intuition that it’s weird.

People’s approach to lab meat is like 4-year-old’s approach to green vegetables—they have no good reason to oppose it, but they oppose it nevertheless based on superficial features. Their argument against it is one word: ICK. Hopefully, as with the stupidity of young children, people will outgrow this paranoia. Whether the human experiment ends up being worth it, whether the world contains more joy than misery may depend on it. If humanity because of stubbornness continues to stuff tiny birds in feces ridden cages, unable to move or turn around, on metal meshing that gives them painful foot injuries; if we continue to grind up baby chicks simply because they are male; if we force pigs to live in feces and ammonia, subject to routine castration and mutilation; if we force billions of chickens to spend their life in tiny sheds, unable to move much, comfortably sleep or walk, or turn around easily, then perhaps it will not have all been worth it. If humanity spreads these vile, ignoble Treblinkas across the galaxy because of our own stupidity and stubbornness, our own refusal to opt for a cruelty-free option when one is available because of idiotic partisanship, it will be perhaps the greatest mistake in human history, and certainly among the most easily avertable.