Cultivated Meat and ‘Technological Solutionism’

There’s a criticism which I see with some frequency in the animal-rights movement which argues those who view cultivated meat as means of reducing nonhuman suffering and premature death are engaged in technological solutionism. I’m sympathetic with the criticism to a certain extent, in that I don’t believe cultivated meat will end animal agriculture on its own. Still, I think accelerating the development of cellular agriculture has the potential to move us further in that direction than any other strategy currently available to us.

Specifically, I’d like those leveling the criticism to engage with what seems to me like a pretty clear historical record showing animal-exploitation industries are most often weakened through technological change, not activist pressure. My guess is there are countless examples of this phenomenon, but some of the most striking ones have been brought to my attention by the animal activist Paul Shapiro, author of the excellent book Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World.

For instance, on his Medium blog, Shapiro details how whale oil saw widespread use in the 19th century as a way to light lamps. New Bedford, Massachusetts, epicenter of the whaling industry, boasted 320 ships which provided jobs to 10,000 people. It was big business that wasn’t brought low by animal activists or environmentalists of the day. Rather, it was the introduction of kerosene, a cheaper alternative to whale oil, that decimated the industry. Today, relics from the whaling era in New Bedford are consigned to museums.

Similarly, as Shapiro noted in the same outlet, technological development has done more to liberate horses from involuntary labor than campaigners. For example, he chronicles the efforts of 19th-century activist Henry Bergh to reform the horse-drawn-carriage industry. Ultimately, however, Shapiro concludes it was the introduction of the steam engine that began the process of moving society away from animal-powered transportation. Now, of course, horse-drawn carriages exist in the United States largely as a novelty.

One could continue to provide instances of this phenomenon, in which technological development, rather than moral persuasion, marginalizes animal exploitation. To be clear, though, as I mentioned earlier, I don’t think cultivated meat will single-handedly decimate nonhuman agriculture, even when the field of cellular agriculture is more mature, and its products can better compete with the price, taste and convenience of slaughtered meat. Animal farming is more deeply entrenched than the examples Shapiro cites.

Vegan activists will be needed to help secure public funding for cultivated-meat research, defend the nascent industry from incumbent attacks, promote acceptance of the new protein, push for greater institutional support for the technology, and, hopefully, sometime in the future, create a popular mandate for taxing and finally outlawing slaughtered meat. Even if much of this doesn’t come to pass, we must remember very low adoption rates of cultivated meat would save billions of creatures annually. It isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition.

So, again, I’m somewhat sympathetic to the critique of cultivated-meat proponents being engaged in a degree of technological solutionism. However, I wish those leveling this critique would engage with the historical record Shapiro and similarly-minded thinkers have highlighted. If their history — which suggests progress for animals is primarily driven by technology, not activism — is incorrect or one-dimensional, please make the case with a competing narrative. I am genuinely open to reading well-researched, dissenting views on this question.

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