Ethical human meat

Would you eat a lab grown human burger?

I believe that in the near future, we’ll all be vegans by default. Not because of any particular awaking of consciousness to animal rights or for health reasons, or anything like that. It’s just that the technology for making synthetic meats will soon be cheaper, healthier, and better for the environment than raising animals for food. Or at least, it will be cheaper, and the potential is there for the other two results.

The technology to make meat that’s better than animal sourced meat exists right now, today. It’s just at the starting line where it’s still a bit expensive and not that robust. But it’s developed enough that from here it isn’t a question of how to do it, it’s a question of how to keep improving it. It’s like what mobile phones were in the mid nineties. Not that impressive, and even though we know it’s going to get better, it’s hard to anticipate the future variety, capability, and scale of social influence.

There will probably be a small sub culture dedicated to eating meat sourced from actual animals, but that’ll be a fringe group indulging in an expensive artisanal lifestyle or hobby. The mainstream will be eating meat created in factories.

With mainstream adoption, we’re going to see some interesting developments. Eventually, we’ll be tailor making meat to suit particular interests, such as high protein and vitamin versions for health conscious people, and super flavoured versions to bring out tastes that have largely been lost in the hyper industrialization of meat in the last hundred years. Once we have mastered meat creation, then, why not create meats that simulate exotic animals we don’t usually eat because of their expense? And then tweak them to make them better than the source?

Then, and this is one direction that I’m hoping to see happen, what if we break away from the source material and start inventing whole new types of meat? We could call it “dragon meat” or “griffon meat”. Brands like Star Wars could create meats that were stylized after creatures referenced in their universes. Ton Ton steaks, for example.

As far as I know, there are two main approaches to creating meat for consumption. One is to simulate it using vegetable products. It’s the same premise as soy…