Unicorn Meat and the Bioeconomy of Future Food

• In Event: Regeneration, Promises and Innovation in the Bioeconomy

Abstract

The development of alternative proteins in the form of plant-based and cultured meat represent the current and future possibility of the continued ‘meatification’ of global diets while simultaneously redefining meat and promising to remove animals from the food production chain. This paper will utilise political economy and social studies of economies and markets lenses (Birch and Tyfield 2013; Çalışkan, K. and Callon 2009, 2010) in order to interrogate the ongoing construction of markets in these novel products as part of the bioeconomy of future food. 
 
This paper will first trace the material and discursive practices enabling biological matter to be converted into (bio)capital formation (Mouat & Prince 2018) within the overall history of meatification. It will ask how the centralisation of meat within contemporary diets is being leveraged by biotech startups, venture capitalists and other actors in order to develop new markets in the hunt for the next ‘investment unicorn’ (billion dollar valued company). Second, as part of the broader financialisation of food, this paper will investigate how the technological innovation of alternative proteins challenges material aspects of the current global meat production chain while simultaneously reinforcing narratives of increasing meat consumption - through the incorporation of plant-based and cultured meats into dietary pathways utilised by e.g. the FAO and EU in their future scenario planning.

Authors

• Richard Lane, Utrecht University

• Mark H Cooper, University of California, Davis