Growing Meat in Laboratories
The Promise, Ontology, and Ethical Boundary-Work of Using Muscle Cells to Make Food
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3856580 |
|---|---|
| Authors | N Stephens (0000-0003-3871-0887, Cardiff University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 159-181 |
| Publication date | 2013-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Configurations (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1063-1801 • E-ISSN: 1080-6520 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/con.2013.0013 |
| OpenAlex | W1994528614 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 41 |
| References cited | 11 |
Over the last decade, several clusters of scientists have been using animal cells in an attempt to grow meat. Known as in vitro, or cultured, meat, the technology involves tissue engineering muscle cells for potential consumption as food. Those supporting the technology articulate a diversity of potential benefits in producing meat in this way, which include environmental-, health-, innovation-, and animal-welfare-related benefits. This essay reports on interviews with scientists and animal activists involved in making and promoting in vitro meat (IVM). While the technology remains in its infancy, its promotion has assertively been pursued with a set of promissory narratives designed to enroll potential funders, commercial investors, and consumers. The essay explores the ethical boundary-work -the drawing of boundaries around what constitutes ethical scientific practice-pursued in the creation of socio-technical expectations around IVM. In particular, it focuses on the emergence of an animal-libratory promissory narrative by exploring how ethically correct practice toward animals is constructed and used to underpin notions of what IVM is and what it can do . The key contributions of the essay are to provide a detailed analysis of the situated ethics of IVM, and to make explicit the relatedness among ethics, promise, and ontology
Animal welfare · Biology · Boundary-work · Engineering ethics · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Narrative · Ontology · Political science · Situated · Social science · Sociology · Agriculture Sustainability and Environmental Impact · Computer Science · Engineering · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Ecology · Mechanical Engineering
Bugs and bivalves
Conclusion
Plant-based meat
Creating and sustaining just food systems
The trouble with veganism
Eggs
A defence of cellular agriculture
A positive case for cultivated meat
Enacting Authenticity: Changing Ontologies of Biological Entities
Bringing cultured meat to market
Many Meats and Many Milks? The Ontological Politics of a Proposed Post-animal Revolution
Promise and Ontological Ambiguity in the In vitro Meat Imagescape
Promises of meat and milk alternatives
The first bite
Does In Vitro Meat Constitute Animal Liberation
The Cafo in the Bioreactor
Vegan food geographies and the rise of Big Veganism
Benevolent technotopias and hitherto unimaginable meats
On breweries and bioreactors
Contesting and reinforcing the future of ‘meat’ through problematization
How Smart Grid Meets In Vitro Meat
Biotechnology as End Game
Animals and Technoscientific Developments
Exploring the sustainability narratives of cultured meat
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Forensic DNA phenotyping in Europe
Chewing Over In Vitro Meat
Moral Steaks? Ethical Discourses of In Vitro Meat in Academia and Australia
Death-Free Dairy? The Ethics of Clean Milk
Public Perceptions of the Ethics of In-vitro Meat
Blood, meat, and upscaling tissue engineering
Ethics and Aesthetics of Alternative Proteins in Japan
Animal research, ethical boundary‐work, and the geographies of veterinary expertise
Magical disruption? Alternative protein and the promise of de-materialization
Framing the future of food
Making Value Out of Ethics
Food as Software
Doing laboratory ethnography
Eating ourselves out of industrial excess? Degrowth, multi-species conviviality and the micro-politics of cultured meat
Cultured meat and cowless milk
Effective altruism, technoscience and the making of philanthropic value
Boundary Making and ‘Good’ Stem Cell Research (SCR) in Mainland China
Tail tales
From Bedside to Bench? Communities of Promise, Translational Research and the Making of Blood Stem Cells
If they come, we will build it
Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science
Drawing Bright Lines
Ethical Boundary-work in the Animal Research Laboratory
Ethical boundary-work in the infertility clinic
The embryo as moral work object
Ethical boundary-work in the embryonic stem cell laboratory
Neuroscientists' everyday experiences of ethics
| Unique citing works | 41 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 3,42 |
| Citation span | 2014 - 2026 (13) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 41 |