The main reasons I’ve seen from vegans for not eating meat seem to be all about the morality of eating a sentient animal, the practices of the modern meat industry, and the environmental impact of it. And don’t have anything to do with the taste of meat.
Since lab-grown meat doesn’t cause animal suffering, and assuming mass production is environmentally friendly, would you consider going back to eating meat if it were the lab-grown kind?
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Nah, the stuff I am cooking without meat tastes better anyways.
Seems like a bold assertion, saying your food tastes better than something that doesn’t exist yet, and so cannot be compared.
I mean, you are probably right, but you can’t know how dinosaur meat or whatever genetically engineered nonexistent animal meat tastes like.
The point of lab meat is to taste like dead animals. I know what dead animals taste like, I ate them for 28 years.
I get that, what I mean is that current attempts fail to even taste like animal meat, so it’s hard to tell what that could actually taste like in the future. Now they pursue the taste of animal meat, but I imagine if they succeed they will go in other directions. Ultimately it’s a tech to grow arbitrary cell structures from arbitrary cells, so nobody says it has to replicate any animal tissue. That’s just unfortunately what people are familiar with.
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I think the actual question is do you feel you can eat lab grown meat? Ethically it meets all the requirements of vegan, as there is no animal suffering, no consent, and muscle tissue cells are less sentient than a plant.
I’m a lazy vegan. I intend to stop eating animal meat as soon as cultured meat is viable. Maybe opportunistic vegan is the term?
I’m pretty sure the term here is “not a vegan”.
As a vegan, I would not eat lab grown meat.
It’s mainly a texture/concept thing, my food needs to be safe from disembodied muscle, fat, skin, cartilage, bone, minced meat containing the combined flesh of thousands of raped and tortured carcasses, the faecal matter and bacterial colonies all meat is covered with, and the horrifying possibility of meat containing hidden cysts full of pus, bits of hair, teeth, genitals, eyeballs, parasites, tumours, zoonotic diseases, prions, etc.
Lab grown flesh would hopefully be exponentially cleaner, and far less problematic than the current rape torture factories and abattoir system, but I will never be able to thematically seperate labgrown meat from what meat currently is, not enough to be able to put it in my mouth and chew it anyway.
Also, all sentient life (as we know it) is made of flesh. Lab growing billions of disembodied chunks from a handful of sentient animals? There is still deep horror to this. Granted it’s on a completely different scale to the current system of livestock atrocities, but it’s still horrifying none the less.
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Did I really trigger you so badly that your feeble hormone addled carivore brain tried to get you to think about eating broccoli?
Wow. New vegan power unlocked.
Every time I see someone shitting on vegans and saying they’re all assholes I always stick up for them and say I see way more aggressively assholish people arguing for eating meat and in fact I haven’t seen any asshole vegans.
Thanks for breaking my streak and making it so I can’t say that anymore without it being a lie…
What makes me an asshole here?
Just fyi, when I’m trying to stem the flow of vegan hate I see online, I find way, way, way more success in not being an obnoxious asshole. It’s a stupid trend, bashing and shitting all over vegans and vegetarians saying the habit is a good thing. Don’t make it harder for everyone else to get on board with this kind of shit.
Did you mean to reply to me?
…yes. Did you read what I said? Because it should be clear I mean you.
So you think vegans should passively put up with bullshit from trolls and never poke fun back? Why?
Are you-
Um. I don’t know what’s even happening here. How do you not get what I’m saying.
Just fyi, when I’m trying to stem the flow of vegan hate I see online, I find way, way, way more success in not being an obnoxious asshole.
Or put another way: “it’s best when trying to make sure not everyone hates a good cause, to not be a total dick.” (Read: you’re being a total dick and not helping your cause.)
It’s a stupid trend, bashing and shitting all over vegans and vegetarians saying the habit is a good thing.
“I understand it’s a stupid trend that people on the internet hate vegans and anyone speaking positively about veganism/vegetarianism.”
Don’t make it harder for everyone else to get on board with this kind of shit.
“You’re making sticking up for veganism/vegans much harder by, as mentioned before, being a dick.”
Get it now?
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I would not east lab grown meat. At this point meat grosses me out, and vegan protein is already very tasty.
I think lab grown meat mostly appeals to meat eaters who recognise that eating meat is wrong but don’t have the discipline to go vegetarian/vegan.
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i’m not a vegan or vegetarian, but from my experience with various plant-based proteins i honestly just do not see the point
we already have perfectly affordable vegan proteins that, while not identical to meat or even necessarily that close, are absolutely as satisfying to chew on and very tasty.
Really, all you need is a chunk of mostly pure protein of any kind and it’s doubtful people are going to much notice the difference if it’s part of a dish and they aren’t given a chance to study the protein in detail.
The only thing you’d really need lab-grown meat for is steaks, which are overrated anyways and like… god eating steak is such a violently bougie thing! The shelves with ground meat here are hilarious because the cheaper ground pork is constantly completely sold out while the ground beef is barely even touched, so i doubt people would even notice the disappearance of the steak that costs 6 times as much…Very relevant video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR8M4zARBXY
No, I think it’s a good idea but I’m fine with plant based alts. I think it’s a lot better than having to kill animals for food but still seems like a lot of extr steps when you can just eat plants and stuff mad from plants without requiring a biological reactor, and lab. I would also assume that the process requires at least some more energy or resorces than regular food processing methods. So it wouldn’t win any points on that front. I was raised vegan for context, so I’ve never actually tasted real meat and don’t see any reason to try it now, lab grown or not.
My question is: why not try it? I mean, I know of people who don’t like to travel outside their town because why bother? But the world is a big interesting place with all sorts of new experiences. Why wouldn’t you want to try new and different foods? Would you try a new fruit you hadn’t had access to before?
re: energy/etc: this is an issue everywhere, and it’s all slowly changing. Farming is still done with big gas guzzling, smoke bellowing machines, for example. (I’ve seen Secret of NIMH).
I’m not vegan but if there were ethically sourced, sustainable and environmentally concious options for lab produced meats that were proven to be suitable and safe for human consumption, I’d willfully switch to that as a source of meat.
As an avid barbecue and smoker enthusiasts, I don’t think there could ever be a replacement for a perfect cut of ribs or a high quality steak. I only get these from my local butcher from local free range, grass fed cattle. Those are special meals though, taking upwards of 12 hours start to finish of attention to detail and a level of reverance for the process. Not a daily occurrence. However, anything with/like ground beef, chicken nuggets and many other food products that don’t require these specific cuts (this includes basically the entire giant filthy diseased corperate slaughter factories, fast food and so on) could easily be replaced by lab cultivated meats. I think that’s inevitable and I fully support R&D of this technology.
I don’t think so, it doesn’t sound very appealing. I’m very used to going without meat, and tofu satisfies me quite well, or seitan. Being vegan to me is getting away from the idea that you need a lump of something fleshy on your plate to be satisfied.
I don’t eat meat because it causes suffering in another. Plants have no concept of pain without a brain, nervous system or even nerve endings. So to me, the question becomes if the lab grown meat was ever attached to a brain that could feel suffering.
Now as far i understand it, lab grown meat isn’t nessecarily grown in isolation from a cow. But in a solution primarily compromised of blood extracted from living cows. That’s without question better than killing a creature, buuuuuuut we all know that when profits are involved the health of a animal is not prioritized.
So it really depends, while I don’t miss meat, once lab grown becomes widely available I’ll make my choice depending on the exact process of how it reached the grocery store.
Plants have no concept of pain without a brain, nervous system or even nerve endings.
Ehhh, questionable.
No. It’s really not. I know the study you are going to link with the clickbait title that “plants feel pain”, but it’s unscientific garbage.
When you cut a plant, it only reacts with a secretion. That’s not sentience, it has no concept of pain because it literally does not have the required parts to feel it. Pain requires a nerve ending to feel the sensation, a brain to process that sensation in to an threat and a system to connect those two organs. Plants have none of this.
Yes plants release a pheromone when they are cut, but to extrapolate that to pain is a wild leap. If I cut an animal, they bleed, they yell, and they either run away or attack me, they generally do the same for their children. Exactly like humans react when cut. It’s impossible to disprove if plants have some other totally radically different type of intelligence we just don’t understand yet, but there is no evidence to suggest that is the case. I am making my choices based off evidence, not “idk, what if it was true”. It’s the same reason I know the earth is round and not flat, evidence not vibes.
It is intellectually dishonest to say that a potato and a pig perceive the world in the same way.
Consciousness is an open question. A potato does not perceive the same way as a pig, but a pig does not perceive the same way as a human. Plants communicate and make rudimentary decisions. Once you start getting into questions of degree, you subjectively decide where to draw the line. If you can argue that the line is between animals and plants, then someone else can argue the line is between animals and humans.
It’s intellectually dishonest to pretend our understanding of sentience and sapience is simple and unambiguous.
If you can argue that the line is between animals and plants, then someone else can argue the line is between animals and humans.
See, this is where you are just throwing your hands up and giving up on an sort of ethics. Because it’s theoretically possible for plants to feel pain then there is no reason to act moral when it comes to animals who we KNOW feel pain.
It’s like saying “porn with adults is harmful, but so is porn with children, who is to say where the line is? It’s an open question that is all perspective, so consume whatever you like”. When we know for a fact that sexual abuse of children causes suffering as opposed to what consenting adults do for a job.
Saying plants feel pain is motivated reasoning to call vegans hypocrites, not to actually produce a better world. I did not message you with my beliefs, you messaged me with whataboutism. 99% of the food humans eat is living in some sense (aside from minerals like salt), yeast in my bread is alive in some sense, but comparing that life to an animal as a reason it may not be matter? That it’s all perspective? Well then why not draw the line around cannibalism of anyone under a certain IQ. If consciousness is such an open question, then who is to say anyone is real except for myself? If I hurt another human, who is to say that they feel at all? It could all be simulation from a certain perspective so who cares?
This sort of “what if” and “it depends” whataboutism doesn’t actually help anyone. I didn’t bring veganism to you, you brought this to me. This is just naval gazing because calling vegan hypocrites makes you more secure in your own choices. You’re not saying anything of value,
Uh, you do know it’s possible to focus on fruits, which are freely given, right? You volunteered your perspective in the first place, and you’re the one throwing your hands up instead of finding an ethical diet. You’re the one trying to justify your choices based on subjective distinction. You’re the one calling yourself a hypocrite. All I said was that your absolute claim was questionable.
I eat, primarily, botanical fruits (which includes cucumbers, squash, and a surprising quantity of other vegetables freely given by plants for our consumption) as well as meat which would otherwise be thrown away. Once the animal is dead, it is far more respectful to consume it than let it be wasted. I typically buy meat on clearance, at the end of the night, on the expiration date.
I have no desire to “gotcha” people who sincerely want to make a better world, but hypocrites who call out others while justifying their own ethical blind spots are typically more interested in self-righteousness than actually improving the world.
🙄🤦
hypocrites who call out others while justifying their own ethical blind spots are typically more interested in self-righteousness than actually improving the world.
Exactly. I agree completely, but scroll up and remember I didn’t call ANYONE out in my original comment. I came to this thread because my perspective was asked for in the title. You came to me with a “but plants” trying to call MY beliefs out. So think whatever you want, but frankly, leave me the hell alone. This isn’t a discussion I asked for, it’s not on topic and you’re not saying anything interesting.
Once again, I said none of that. Scroll up to verify I didn’t call you out at any point.
This is a public forum, when you make a statement people are free to comment. You made a statement I disagreed with, and all I said was that the statement was questionable. All the rest of this “calling beliefs out” happened purely in your head. Feel how you wish about your choices, but don’t implicate me in your projection.
I would not trust anyone who tells me it’s lab grown. I’ve had so many restaurants and people lie to me that someone ws vegan, out of malice and out of incompetence, that I just would not believe that a burger was “lab grown” instead of made with cheap meat leftovers.
If somehow I I could assure that it was made without animals being hurt, maybe. Meat is unhealthy so I would still mostly avoid it.
How is free range grown-up meat bad for health?
Everything within limits and maybe not the cheapest drug filled meat?The human body is an amagin versatile machine. But the best diet for health seems to be plant based whole foods. Meat should be a very small part of your diet. It has been linked to all main causes of death like heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimers…
No way, it’s made by animal testing and I don’t trust anyone to actually use that instead of cheaper, subsidized cruelty that is normally served.
Also meat is really unhealthy and unnecessary. I’ve been vegan almost 10 years now and all my coworkers are suffering diseases from eating a shitty diet but people regularly think I’m 10 years younger than I am. My manager who is younger than me at 43 just had to get stents and had a heart attack. Long story short, I’m not looking to eat like you people ever again.
but people regularly think I’m 10 years younger than I am.
This is the same kind of magical thinking that leads some vegans to believe that they don’t produce any body odor, or that they can cure cancer through diet. I eat meat, I’m nearing 50, I’m physically healthy, and regularly mistaken for being in my 30s. The idea that vegan = healthy diet is, well, pretty obviously nonsense, since Oreos are vegan and still terrible for you.
A lot of aging is just genetics.
Keep telling yourself that, recipes run in families too. There is mountains of evidence showing that plant based diets are the healthiest and that saturated fat, where most of the calories in meat come from, is bad for you. The non vegans in my family look like everyone else, I seem to be a genetic marvel along with my wife.
You seem a little defensive of your choices.
Vegetarian here. It’s not something I’d personally buy or use in meals, as I don’t really have the desire to eat meat. That said, if it happened to be in a dish I really want to try at a restaurant, sure I’d eat it.
For me the main benefit of it would be the ability to try local/cultural dishes while travelling, if lab grown meat was an option.
