Cellular Agriculture and the Prospects of Deliberative Food Democracy

• In Event: Feeding the Anthropocene: The Promises of Agro-Food Tech and the Difference Of Food - II

Abstract

Innovators in the emerging field of cellular agriculture and cell-based meat production (also known as lab-grown, cultured, in vitro, or clean meat) promise that, if scaled up, their products could bring enormous boosts to global sustainability, public health, and animal welfare. As STS scholars such as Jasanoff (2016) insist, however, even those inventions that are built on promises of sustainability bring with them “hard and thorny problems” – including risk, inequality, and threats to meaning and value. This paper outlines a multi-institutional research initiative – composed of scholars with backgrounds in sociology, legal studies, communication, and agricultural economics – aimed at assessing the overlapping social, economic, and environmental implications of cellular agriculture. The project has a stated aim of engaging diverse groups of stakeholders – from the worlds of science and engineering, the social sciences and humanities, business, agriculture, environmentalism, and the broader public – into shared conversation about the promises and perils of cellular agriculture. The initiative places a particular emphasis on exploring alternative economic and open scientific platforms through which cellular agriculture might be developed and deployed. Fundamentally, the work aims for a balance between the techno-utopian dreams that are offered up by many cellular agriculture proponents and the sometimes unempirical but culturally significant objections that are raised by some of food technology’s fiercest opponents. At a critical moment in the development of the technology, the work offers a practical vision for deliberative democratic decision-making around the future of cell-based meats.

Authors

• Garrett M Broad, Fordham University

• Robert M Chiles, Penn State University