Fund Cultured-Meat Research

BY JON HOCHSCHARTNER 
Crossposted with Animal People Forum

OpEds

It's a moral crime with which there are few parallels in history. Most of us know there's something wrong with our treatment of animals, but we try not to think about it —burying such concern deep in the back of our mind. We dismiss our compassion as misplaced sentimentality and create elaborate, frequently-unconscious rationales for why we should ignore it.

The wheels of business and human food compulsions are implacable and totally lacking in compassion. This is a downed cow, badly hurt, but still being dragged to slaughter. Click on this image to fully appreciate this horror repeated millions of times every day around the world. With plentiful non-animal meat substitutes that fool the palate, there is no longer reason for this senseless suffering.

What many are not aware of is an emerging technology that will make aligning our values and actions easier. Cultured meat is grown from animal cells without slaughtering nonhumans. It has the potential to remove unimaginable misery from our food system with little to no sacrifice on our part. In some ways, this sounds too good to be true, like promises on a late-night infomercial. But the science is real.

Dr. Mark Post created the first cultured-beef hamburger in 2013. It cost a whopping $280,000. Soon he thinks that price could be reduced to $10. Still, more research is required to make cultured meat economically competitive. This is too important to leave to the private sector. We need federal funding for cultured-meat development.