Recently tried an Impossible burger and nuggets and thought that if nobody told me it wasn’t meat, I’d have thought the patty was made out of a weird kind of meat, rather than make a connection with the taste and texture of plants. Honestly, I might not complain if that was the only kind of “meat” I could have for the rest of my life.
Well, maybe I’d miss bacon.
I’ve yet to find the opportunity to try lab-grown meat, but I for sure would like to try it out and don’t see much wrong with it as long as it’s sustainable, reasonably priced, and doesn’t have anything you wouldn’t expect in a normal piece of meat.
Also, with imitation and lab-grown options, I’d no longer have to deal with the disgust factor of handling raw meat (esp. the juices) or biting into gristle. I’ll happily devour a hot dog, but something about an unexpected bit of cartilage gives me a lingering sense of revulsion.
Imitation meat and lab-grown meats are quite different. I would be more psychologically uncomfortable eating lab-grown meat knowing that it’s real animal cells, not plant cells, even if it was never sentient. Not to mention that the disgust factor you mentioned would still be present for lab-grown meat as it’s supposed to be biochemically identical.
Imitation meat is ok and I will eat it from time to time, but I don’t like how much vegan eating is centred around mock meats. I prefer stuff that doesn’t try to imitate animal products; it generally tastes better to me, and it’s way cheaper. Nothing against imitation meat; if you like it, go eat it. Just not huge on them myself.
I’m sceptical that lab-grown meat can ever become sustainable, but if they can pull it off I won’t try to stop them.
If it was never sentient, what’s the fundamental difference between eating the animal cells as opposed to plant cells? Not trying to argue, just genuinely curious what the issue would be
I’m not saying there’s an ethical issue. Just for many people who haven’t eaten meat in a long time, the idea of eating meat in any capacity feels disturbing. The same way a lot of western meat eaters would feel uncomfortable with eating dog meat despite it not being ethically different from other commonly eaten western meats (pigs are generally considered more intelligent than dogs), or you’d be uncomfortable with consensual cannibalism, because it feels wrong regardless of actual ethical implications.
Fair enough, I see your point