Off The Menu: Lab-grown meats, seafood on the horizon
Updated Mar 06, 2021;
Posted Mar 06, 2021
Memphis Meats shows chicken it produced in a laboratory from chicken cells in Emeryville, Calif. A growing number of startups worldwide are making cell-based or cultured meat that doesn t require slaughtering animals. (AP Photo/Terry Chea)AP
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The animal proteins meat, poultry, seafood, and eggs that have always been a focus of the restaurant dining experience have been undergoing a metamorphosis over the last several years, with plant-based substitutes and now lab-grown alternatives becoming increasingly available and, more importantly, competitive in terms of both eating quality and price.
Such acts are portrayed as being the result of “group-think” and “intolerance” that should serve as a “warning” to freedom-loving people. If this argument sounds familiar, it’s because it comes straight out of the right-wing talking points we have seen south of the border among apologists for statues, monuments, and place names that honour Confederates, leaders of the Ku Klux Klan, slave-owners, eugenicists, and other white supremacists. As a cultural geographer who has studied the politics of commemoration for nearly two decades, the hypocrisy of these claims never ceases to amaze me. If we want to talk about cancelling cultures, many of the historical figures who have been placed up on a pedestal in the public square were the quintessential culture-cancellers promoting genocidal policies, banning Indigenous cultural practices, and so on.