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?
I would not mind eating lab grown and I think it is great if people would eat that instead but ive been vegan for so long that i have no interest in meat. I hardly eat mock meats, its only in social situations to not stand out to much.
Seconded. When I was vegan I’d already been vegetarian for years. Meat, including fake meat, held no appeal.
Same. I stopped eating meat in the mid 90s, was pescatarian until 2019, and have been vegan since. I don’t miss meat at all. I’ll eat an impossible or a beyond burger occasionally because it’s sometimes my only option, but I could just as easily skip them.
I wouldn’t judge anyone else for eating lab meat, though. I don’t have any moral issue with it, it just isn’t something I’m personally interested in.
it’s* only in
Meat is delicious, you should try it if theres no reason not to
For sure
If it’s cheap, sure.
I don’t have any ethical issues with it, I just don’t find meat appetizing anymore. I’m all for having the option for people who want it though.
No, I dont like the taste or texture
So, you’ve already tasted lab-grown meat?
I think they mean they don’t like the taste/texture of meat already so why would they go over to lab grown.
Given that the point of lab grown meat is to stand in for butchered meat, I think it’s fair to assume they’ll target the same taste/texture. Honestly, what’s even the point of the discussion without that premise baked in?
Where are you getting lab grown meats?
I grew up vegetarian and I’m used to regarding body parts as belonging to a living thing and to be used in service of it, not as food.
If others cannot stop eating meat from animals then I would find it less morally wrong to eat lab-grown. Still disgusting though. And unlikely to be very resource efficient. Or safe. That’s my two pennies!
Vegetarian not vegan, but I wouldn’t really have an issue if ethical. Nutrition is another matter to consider.
+1, I was fully veg for about 15y until I started having dreams about turkey sandwiches. I’m weekday veg now and only eat meat/eggs/etc that isn’t sourced from factory farming. Shit’s expensive and if lab grown meat has the same nutritional profile without the animal suffering I’d happily switch.
Fwiw my wife had a long period of being vegetarian primarily because she doesn’t like the taste of beef. So that reasoning does occur as well. She’s not vegetarian any more but mostly keeps to chicken due to the taste
Yeah, I was going to say, if taste is the only issue, has she tried NON-beef meats? Like pork, and turkey, and chicken, and fish.
Or hell…if you want a heart attack, go back to 2014 and get the meat mountain. It was like 37 different meats stacked on top of each other, and when I measured mine, it was 23 inches tall. My arbys sandwich was 23 inches tall. I only ever ordered one. It was meals for like 3 days. I made the joke that you don’t put a toothpick in the middle, you put a dagger.
Username checks out
It’s a lot of effort to solve an issue that’s already solved by being vegan so eh, I’m pretty indifferent to it at least at face value. If it can compete with a vegan diet in terms of climate and ecosystem impact then I’ll support it but I’ve no interest in it personally. I don’t really have any justification for not being interested, I’m just not.
I’d be much more interested in seeing artificial cheese made from proteins created by yeast or bacteria tbh.
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,
Why not celebrity meat?
If that’s fine for them, why not? But I’d rather like to have a taste of myself. Always wondered what I would taste like.
Let’s take this a step farther.
Would you eat human meat that was grown in a lab, if you could know for certain that the cells that were used to form the cultures were harvested from a consenting adult that was duly compensated? What if that person not only had consented, but wanted to be eaten, because they had a vore fetish, and enjoyed the thought of people eating pieces of them?
I would. Ever since I singed my arm with a small explosion in high school, I’ve been intrigued to try. It smelled delicious.
I have a brand (yeah, the kind done with red-hot metal); my impression was that burning skin and subcutaneous fat smelled like a delicious pork roast.
Not vegan but I’d wager most wouldn’t, not even because of the ethics stuff everyone memes about
Breaking down meats takes an energy investment that breaking plants down doesn’t. So people who are used to a low meat or meatless diet aren’t recommended to go full steam on some carnitas first time they feel like getting back on the red and pink stuff.
Literally it causes heavy fatigue and tiredness untill they re-adjust to the energy investment, and if you’re already feeling fine just not eating meat then what exactly would be the point of putting yourself through that?
And I’m saying this as a total beef and pork addict, my dad’s pescatarian so I got to learn about sudden diet shift health effects from his doctor when he first went for the fishes.