Meet Shmeat: Food System Ethics, Biotechnology and Re-Worlding Technoscience

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 Fortun's analysis of promising is largely inspired by Jacques Derrida's deconstruction of promising as a condition of thought and language in general, rather than as a singular and intentional speech act. This dislocation is an important element of my methodology in this paper. The ‘promise’ and ‘inevitability’ of cultured meat does not exist as a specific act on the part of its proponents, but is rather a condition of its plausibility as a sustainable source of protein. Thus my sources move between mainstream journalism, professional ethicists and the claims made by scientists – the promise is not easily located and there lies its discursive power. M Fortun, Promising Genomics: Iceland and DeCODE Genetics in a World of Speculation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). 2 Sarah Franklin, ‘Ethical Biocapital: New Strategies of Cell Culture,’ in Remaking Life and Death: Toward An Anthropology of the Biosciences, eds. Lock Margaret and Sarah Franklin, School of American Research Advanced Seminar Series (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research, 2003); S Franklin, ‘The Cyborg Embryo: Our Path to Transbiology’, Theory, Culture & Society, 23.7–8 (2006). See also: Stefan Helmreich, ‘Species of Biocapital’, Science as Culture, 17.4 (2008). 3 Nikolas Rose, The Politics of Life Itself. Biomedicine, Power and Subjectivity in the 21st Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). 4 It's not clear where the portmanteau ‘shmeat’ or ‘schmeat’ was coined. In a segment on the satirical news television show The Colbert Report, one of the primary scientists working on cultured meat, Vladamir Mironov, claimed that the name is a combination of ‘shit’ and ‘meat’. I suspect that it is a less vulgar slang of appending ‘sh’ sounds to names in order to mockingly diminish their authenticity and importance. The World of Nahlej: Shmeat (Comedy Central, March 17, 2009), < http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/221975/march-17-2009/world-of-nahlej–-shmeat> [22/09/2012]. 5 Rose describes molecularization as a process that ‘strips tissues, proteins, molecules and drugs of their specific affinities – to a disease, to an organ, to an individual, to a species – and enables them to be regarded in many respects, as manipulable and transferable elements or units, which can be delocalized – moved from place to place, from organisms to organisms, from disease to diseases, from person to person’. Rose, The Politics of Life Itself, p.15. 6 Richard Twine, Animals as Biotechnology: Ethics, Sustainability and Critical Animal Studies (London: Routledge, 2010), p.121. 7 Astrid Schrader, ‘The Time of Slime: Anthropocentrism in Harmful Algal Research’, Environmental Philosophy 9.1 (2012), pp.71–94. 8 Alfred Nordmann, ‘If and Then: A Critique of Speculative NanoEthics’, NanoEthics 1.1 (2007). 9 Nordmann, ‘If and Then’, p.41. 10 Biomedicalization is a term coined by Clarke et al. to describe the process of defining ever more aspects of life as a matter for intervention by molecular biosciences. A E Clarke et al., ‘Biomedicalization: Technoscientific Transformations of Health, Illness and US Biomedicine’, American Sociological Review (2003), pp.161–194. 11 Hannah Landecker, ‘Food As Exposure: Nutritional Epigenetics and the New Metabolism’, BioSocieties 6.2 (2011). 12 Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (New York: Penguin, 2009). 13 Pollan, In Defense of Food, p.102. 14 Paul Rabinow, Hubert Dreyfus and Michel Foucault, ‘On the Genealogy of Ethics: Overview of Work in Progress,’ in Essential Works of Michel Foucault, 1954–1984, Volume 1: Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth (New York: New Press, 1997), p.259; Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure (Random House Digital, 2012). 15 Rabinow, Dreyfus and Foucault, ‘On the Genealogy of Ethics’, p.256. 16 Colin Koopman, ‘Genealogical Pragmatism: How History Matters for Foucault and Dewey’, Journal of the Philosophy of History 5.3 (2011). 17 H Zwart, ‘A Short History of Food Ethics’, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 12.2 (2000), pp.113–126. 18 Zwart, ‘A Short History of Food Ethics’, p.125. 19 Michael Specter, ‘Test Tube Burgers: How Long Will It Be Before You Can Eat Meat That Was Made in a Lab?, The New Yorker (23 May 2011), pp.32–38; Z.F. Bhat and Hina Bhat, ‘Animal-free Meat Biofabrication’, American Journal of Food Technology 6.6 (2011), pp.441–459. 20 Donna J Haraway, When Species Meet (Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota Press, 2008); Susan Leigh Star, ‘Power, Technology and the Phenomenology of Conventions: On Being Allergic to Onions,’ in A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and the Domination, ed. John Law (New York: Routledge, 1991). 21 Evelyn B Pluhar, ‘Meat and Morality: Alternatives to Factory Farming’, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 23.5 (2010). 22 Lakshmi Sandhana, ‘Test Tube Meat Nears Dinner Table’, < http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/06/71201> [04/11/2010]. 23 Andrew Revkin, ‘Can People Have Meat and a Planet Too?, New York Times (2008) < http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/11/> [22/09/2012]; Stephanie Pulford, ‘The Schtory of Schmeat: Vladimir Mironov's Lab-Grown Chicken’, < http://www.scientificblogging.com/run_and_tumble/schtory_schmeat_vladimir_mironovs_labgrown_chicken> [22/09/2012]. 24 Pulford, ‘The Schtory of Schmeat’. Mironov similarly said to NPR in 2008 that, ‘I personally believe that this is the inescapable future’. Ketzel Levine, ‘Lab-Grown Meat a Reality, but Who Will Eat It?’ < http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId = 90235492> [03/03/2010]. 25 Sandhana, ‘Test Tube Meat Nears Dinner Table’. 26 Pulford, ‘The Schtory of Schmeat’. 27 Neil Stephens, ‘In Vitro Meat: Zombies on the Menu’, SCRIPTed, 7:2 (2010). 28 Kerstin Cuhls, ‘Science, Technology and Innovation Drivers Short Report to the SCAR Expert Working Group/ EU Comission’ (December, 2006). 29 Philip K Thornton, ‘Livestock Production: Recent Trends, Future Prospects’, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 365.1554 (2010). 30 Sandhana, ‘Test Tube Meat Nears Dinner Table’. 31 Marty Beckerman, ‘How Lab-Grown Steak Could Save the World’, Esquire Online, < http://www.esquire.com/blogs/food-for-men/cloned-meat-environment -080610> [11/09/2010]. 32 John Vidal, ‘Artificial Meat? Food for Thought by 2050’, < http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/16/artificial-meat-food-royal-society/> [04/11/2010]. 33 Levine, ‘Lab-Grown Meat a Reality’. 34 Newkirk does not note that cultured meat, like nearly all cell cultures, is now grown on fetal bovine serum, a byproduct of slaughtering pregnant cows. Stephen Pincock, ‘Meat, in Vitro?’, The Scientist, 21.9 (2007), p.22. 35 Specter, ‘Test Tube Burgers’. 36 Levine, ‘Lab-Grown Meat a Reality’. 37 Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1996), p.62. 38 James McWilliams, ‘Eating (Synthetic) Animals’, < http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2010/06/eating-synthetic-animals/58930/> [10/07/2010]. Specter, ‘Test Tube Burgers’. 39 Benjamin Hale, ‘Gavagai Goulash: Growing Organs for Food’, Think (2007), pp.61–71. 40 Patrick D Hopkins and Austin Dacey, ‘Vegetarian Meat: Could Technology Save Animals and Satisfy Meat Eaters?’, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 21.6 (2008). 41 Levine, ‘Lab-Grown Meat a Reality’; Specter, ‘Test Tube Burgers’. 42 Vidal, ‘Artificial Meat? Food for Thought by 2050’. 43 Pulford, ‘The Schtory of Schmeat’. 44 Timothy Johns and Pablo B Eyzaguirre, ‘Biofortification, Biodiversity and Diet: A Search for Complementary Applications Against Poverty and Malnutrition’, Food Policy, 32.1 (2007); M J Chrispeels, ‘Biotechnology and the Poor’, Plant Physiology, 124.1 (2000), pp.3–6. 45 M Enserink, ‘Tough Lessons From Golden Rice’, Science, 320.5875 (2008). 46 Hopkins and Dacey, ‘Vegetarian Meat’. 47 C Holdrege and S Talbott, Beyond Biotechnology: The Barren Promise of Genetic Engineering (Lexington: University of Kentucky, 2008). 48 S C Loerch, ‘Efficacy of Plastic Pot Scrubbers As a Replacement for Roughage in High-concentrate Cattle Diets’, Journal of Animal Science, 69.6 (1991), pp. 2321–2328. 49 Holdrege and Talbott, Beyond Biotechnology, p.120. 50 Paul B Thompson, ‘The Opposite of Human Enhancement: Nanotechnology and the Blind Chicken Problem’, NanoEthics, 2.3 (2008). See also: P B Thompson, ‘Why Using Genetics to Address Welfare May Not Be a Good Idea’, Poult Sci, 89.4 (2010). 51 As Thompson points out, such chickens currently exist, but not as a biotechnology. They are an accidental product of conventional breeding and not widely in use. 52 Lewis Holloway, ‘Subjecting Cows to Robots: Farming Technologies and the Making of Animal Subjects’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 25.6 (2007). 53 Martin Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001). See also Jacques Derrida, Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 54 Nicholas Gane, ‘When We Have Never Been Human, What Is to Be Done?: Interview with Donna Haraway’, Theory, Culture & Society, 23.7–8 (2006). 55 Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (London: Routledge, 1991), p.150. 56 It is of course necessary to carefully account for the material harms or benefits of any given food system, but following Haraway's later distinction between killing and making killable, calculative reasoning alone will not get us to an understanding of who lives and dies in what worlds. Haraway argues that killing is inevitable in any biological world and therefore it is the practice of making animals (and ecosystems) killable – abject, unworthy of consideration and non-agential – that ought to draw our outrage. However, much applied animal ethics work focuses on determining which animals do and do not fall into the category of killable and not-killable, as if more accurate sorting were the proper response to the rigid violence of industrial animal agriculture (or biomedical research). The limits of responsibility in such a model of applied ethics is in proper sorting, not in the forging of new forms of relatings. Haraway, When Species Meet, p.80. 57 Response-ability is a reframing of ethics proposed by feminist science studies scholars, particularly Haraway, Barad and Schrader (and further developed in a forthcoming article by Metcalf and Jenny Reardon). More than a clever play on words, response-ability understands ethics as the capacity to respond rather than calculative reaction according to a set of rules. 58 Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, ‘Matters of Care in Technoscience: Assembling Neglected Things’, Social Studies of Science, 41.1 (2011). 59 See for instance Sandra Garson, ‘How the Buddha Came Into Your Kitchen’, Tricycle Magazine Summer (2002). She notes that Buddhism started with a meal that was gifted to the Buddha. 60 Edward Brown (ed.), Tassajara Cooking (Boston, MA: Shambhala, 1986).