The issue of lab grown meat has been quite a hot topic in recent years, mostly from the agriculture industry who obviously don’t want to support this industry as it would put them out of business. I believe we are still a long way off lab grown meat being able for human consumption – lab grown meat being used for pet food seems to be moving quite quickly by comparison – but it is an interesting topic to think about.
I saw this news article on the BBC about lab grown meat possibly being able to buy within 2 years, and it did make me wonder if I would ever eat lab grown meat. Personally, I am vegan 100% for the animals (the health and the environmental benefits are just a happy bonus) so I would never chose to consume anything that contained animal products. However, if lab grown meat contains no animal exploitation or any harm being done to an animal, then would I be more willing to eat it?
Personally, I think I would try it. If the lab grown meat was 100% free from animal exploitation or animal suffering, then I don’t really have any reason not to try it. My one hesitation would be more from a health perspective: I have not consumed animal products in almost 10 years at this point, and I have not eaten meat in about 16 years. I therefore wonder how my body would react to suddenly having meat again – I’ve always been under the impression that if you cut out any food product from your diet you do run the risk of developing an intolerance to that food as your body forgets how to process that specific food. Now I haven’t looked super deeply into this – I have no intention of ever eating animals again so it’s not really an issue – but I do wonder how my body would react if I just suddenly reintroduced a food type that it hadn’t had to deal with for 16 years.
I do think that we are a long way away from lab grown meat actually being a viable option on the open market, but it is still a cool concept to think about. It is also really interesting just to see how science is developing, and it does make me a little hopeful that maybe one day, using animals for meat will be a thing of the past. Is there really any need for animal agriculture when we can grow meat in a lab? An interesting concept to think about.
Taylor Talks Vegan 