Capitalist Techno-fixes Will Not Save Us: The Perils of Trusting in the Cultured Meat Industry

This article responds to two philosophers’ critiques of a previous article in which the author argued that, as a strategy for systemic transformation based on and driven by capital investment, cultured meat is incapable of posing a real challenge to the capitalist system of animal exploitation and c...

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Bibliographic Details
Subtitles:Will Cultured Meat and Fish Save Nonhuman Animals? On Promises and Perils of Consuming Animal Cells For Food
Main Author: Abrell, Elan (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Published: 2025
In: Journal of applied animal ethics research
Year: 2025, Volume: 7, Issue: 2, Pages: 138-152
Further subjects:B Climate Change
B cell culture
B techno-fix
B solutionism
B animal agriculture
B Meat
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
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Summary:This article responds to two philosophers’ critiques of a previous article in which the author argued that, as a strategy for systemic transformation based on and driven by capital investment, cultured meat is incapable of posing a real challenge to the capitalist system of animal exploitation and commodification upon which the global food system currently depends. In response to the philosophers’ claim that cultured meat can play a role in ending animal farming, it argues that cultured meat’s status as a capitalist techno-fix makes it fundamentally incapable of challenging, let alone transforming, industrial animal farming. In the following section, it refutes their second argument that resources invested in cultured meat did not undermine alternative strategies and explains the difference between solutions and responses, which can provide open-ended potential starting points for exploring alternatives to an animal-dependent food system itself, rather than just substitutes for the problematic things it produces. In the last section, it addresses their last critique that cultured meat should be a part of any strategy for political change in the food system by explaining how the cultured meat techno-fix is in fact an effort to circumvent the need for political, economic, and socio-cultural transformation, none of which it can facilitate as it serves to maintain the status quo for all three.
ISSN:2588-9567
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of applied animal ethics research
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/25889567-bja10068