ARTICLES

Technology as Responsibility: Failure, Food Animals,and Lab-grown Meat

Wyatt Galusky

Accepted: 18 May 2014

� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Abstract As we become more aware of the various problems associated with

technologically mediated meat production (e.g., the lives of the animals, the human

health effects of consuming meat, the ecological impacts of large-scale animal

farming), we also confront a variety of technologically mediated potential fixes

(e.g., in vitro meat technologies). Rather than comparing bad and good technologies

in the context of meat, I want instead to explore the dynamics of the human-animal

relationships expressed within specific approaches. This method, I suggest, illus-

trates the technological aspects of the relationships, which reflect an orientation to

the world (in the form of the animal body and the surrounding ecologies) that

mediates human interaction with the environment. It also helps to show that the

more we try to take responsibility for those bodies—in terms of knowledge, in terms

of energy—the more we require the environment to reflect our conditions and the

less tolerant we become of failure.

Keywords Meat � Agriculture � Technology � In vitro meat � Responsibility �Ethics

Introduction

Meat has problems, and many of those problems are intimately tied to technology.

Industrialization of meat production has led to increased stresses on animals, on

people, and on environments. I confronted this intersection of technology and meat

through my own attempts to care for eight chickens, animals I felt would be

meaningful to raise—both as a learning opportunity and as a reaction to the

W. Galusky (&)

Science, Technology and Society Program, Morrisville State College, 216 Crawford Hall,

P.O. Box 901, Morrisville, NY 13408, USA

e-mail: galusky@morrisville.edu

123

J Agric Environ Ethics

DOI 10.1007/s10806-014-9508-9

problems I perceived to be endemic to our contemporary, industrialized food system

(see Galusky 2010). I wanted to be able to take ownership of some small aspect of

what fed me, and shrink the otherwise enormous socio-technical networks that

underlay food. What shrank, instead, was the size of my ‘‘flock,’’ from eight to

seven to five to four to one, over the course of a few months. Call it a failure of

responsibility. In a very real sense, my own failure to be responsible for those

chickens is inextricably linked to the larger, more systemic failures to take full

responsible for animals. On the one hand, the impacts of the system prompted my

efforts; on the other hand, that system also enabled me to try because so little was

personally at stake. If things went wrong, I did not have to scrape the bottom of the

barrel (see Horowitz 2006). I just had to go back to the supermarket. Reflecting on

my failures and my responsibilities led me back to the more systemic failures and

responsibilities we have created through more fundamental modifications through-

out that system—to animal bodies, to models of work, to communities and

economies and ecologies.

The experience with chickens made me confront some of the central ironies

attached to food production and technology—industrialization that generates ethical

discomfort while providing material comfort; technology that serves as the source of

disaster and the promise of progress. By making meat more technologically, more

beholden to the spatial, temporal, and standardized logic of machines in raising

animals and in processing animal bodies, we create problems for animals, people,

and environments. Ironically, awareness of the problems associated with industri-

alized systems of production is often predicated on their success. Industrialization of

meat, and our food supply in general, generates enough food to make deprivation an

economic, rather than material, condition—a question of access, rather than

absence. Many of us, facing a choice regarding what to eat, rather than whether, can

now display more sensitivity toward problems associated with how such plenty is

achieved because we are not beholden to material scarcity—call it a paradox of

abundance (see Ogle 2013). Choices about what to eat expand beyond taste and

become expressions of value and demands for solutions. Technology reenters the

discussion here, as well, positioned as a potential savior. This is the contemporary

condition—looking to technology to solve the problems wrought by technology.

One current embodiment of technological salvation arrives in the form of in vitro

meat, a move from the factory to the laboratory that strives to remove the animal

(and the affiliated systems and processes) from the equation. Chicken -

chicken = chicken. Beef - cow = beef. The animal is no longer a ‘‘protein

machine with flaws’’ (Pollan 2006, 219). Just a protein machine, without the animal.

One particular approach we could take in evaluating these various meat

production systems, these types of protein machines, would be to compare good

versus bad technological intervention, examining how technologies can corrupt or

rescue meat. To compare industrialization and its instantiations (e.g., concentrated

animal feeding operations, or CAFOs) to in vitro meat production, comparing their

respective outcomes. Instead, I want to suggest that we are better off recalibrating

the discussion. What if we looked at meat as a technology, not just the product of

technology? And what if, in so doing, we came to understand technology as a means

of relating to the natural world, predicated on causation and maintenance? I argue

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that this perspective sheds important light on the ethical questions we face in

confronting human efforts to make and remake meat, by looking at the deeper

assumptions shared by technological intervention.

Thinking about meat as a technology in this way ties us intimately with the idea

of responsibility. In particular, we explore a system that produces meat, by taking on

responsibility for natural processes (within bodies, and in the service of bodies) so

that they reflect human desires. Focusing on meat as a technology, I want to argue

here, will enable us to see connections between industrialized meat production, my

irresponsible attempts, and new methods of making meat meant to minimize or even

eliminate problems. I also suggest that the visibility of such connections can enrich

our ethical discussions and debates about meat. Focusing on responsibility, refracted

through the lens of technology, allows us to more fully realize the stakes involved,

and what kinds of new responsibilities we are taking on as we look for solutions to

the problems of meat. By viewing meat in general as a technology, we can more

meaningfully map the stakes involved in the contestations over animal bodies within

the human food system, especially as we move to make meat ‘‘better’’.

Technology as Problem for Meat

The idea that technology has created a problem for meat, especially in the

contemporary context, is not a new or especially controversial one. Many people

have documented the historical development of the more industrialized meat

production system (Horowitz 2006), as well as the emergence of failures associated

with this industrial turn for animals (Weis 2013), farmers (Philpott 2010; Novak

2012), workers (Striffler 2005; Cook 2010), communities (Stull and Broadway

2004), ecologies (Weis 2013), and consumers (Ogle 2013). Gains in efficiency

achieved through the employment of technologies such as CAFOs—producing more

meat, more quickly, with fewer inputs and fewer people—have come through

exerting greater control over the animal body at all phases of the lifecycle and over

the labor of the people associated with meat production, resulting in greater stresses

at all points in the process (see Imhoff 2010). Animals reach mandated weight more

quickly (through the production and administration of specialized diets and

antibiotics). Mechanization allows for greater concentration of production and

processing. Increased understanding of biology has led to increased manipulation of

animal bodies to promote the speed and the type of growth. The ‘‘success’’ of this

system has other costs on the consumer end, related to the wide availability of food

that is cheap to buy and manages to hide the true costs of production (see below). As

my own experiences have focused on chickens, I tend to organize my thinking on

this topic through chicken related, or at least chicken adjacent, terms. And so with

these stresses, we have PEEEEP. These problems are complex, interrelated,

multivariate, and seemingly intractable:

• Physiological—the animal body resists uniformity, grows undesirable elements

that are non-edible, and exhibits unprofitable behaviors. As Roger Horowitz puts

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it, industry strives to ‘‘overcome the twin obstacles of natural growth rates and

variations in size’’ (2006: 131).

• Ecological—CAFOs generate waste and pollute local communities and ecosys-

tems, which is part of what Weis calls the ‘‘ecological hoofprint’’ (2013).

Globally, they contribute greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

• Economic—persistent inefficiencies in raising animals for meat, along with the

vertical integration of meat production systems, leaving many farmers with

much of the financial risk, and little of the reward, for growing animals (the

chicken industry pioneered this integration—see Striffler 2005; it has spread to

other meat production industries—see Leonard 2014).

• Epidemiological—health and disease issues plague animals housed in CAFOs

(Kirby 2010); overconsumption of animal products can create long-term

negative health effects in humans (Simon 2013);

• Ethical and Political—concerns over animal welfare lead to political action (Joy

2008).

These problems are not mutually exclusive, of course, and some solutions to

particular problem areas (e.g., antibiotics given to animals sickened by confined

environments and simple diets) lead to exacerbated problems in other areas (e.g.,

environmental overuse of antibiotics and resistant bacteria). It’s important to realize,

however, that these problems emerge with, or are exacerbated by, the industrial-

ization of meat production, which in turn is embedded within a certain

sociotechnical system, where people are mostly consumers that rely on the

predictable and efficient production of food for which just a few others are

responsible. In other words, people become dependent upon a flawed system. The

problems outlined above are threats to that system, in that all could potentially

derail its function.

Growing awareness and concern about these problems associated with making

meat has led to a variety of responses. For consumers—a diet based on abstinence

from meat, like vegetarianism or veganism (see Foer 2009; Pluhar 2010), greater

awareness of, and subsequent altered behavior meant to challenge, the contexts of

production (Keith 2009), and advocacy for a change in laws governing meat animals

(Tomaselli and Niles 2010). Such concerns have led to laws such as in the European

Union, where the Farm Animal Welfare Council adopted the Five Freedoms

(‘‘Animal Welfare...’’ 2014). For producers responding to market pressures or

asserting ideals—minor modifications, such as those demanded by McDonald’s

restaurants from suppliers (see Michel 2012), or more fundamental changes to

animal husbandry (Logsdon 2004). This latter tack involves taking the animal body

as the limit of technological intervention, to which the system itself should be

beholden. One example is instructively christened grass-farming by a host of

individuals (see Salatin 1995)—grass being the primary focus of intervention by the

farmer. This method unwinds the complexities of the farm/factory system,

suggesting that the solution could be toward less intensive farming. Animals are

rotated through a grazing schedule, participating in a different ecology than the one

of the factory, imposing less stress on the animal body. More field, less factory.

None are perfect, however, or solve all of the problems. Abstinence offers an

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individual respite from participation in the system, but leaves the existing structures

relatively unchallenged. Practices like grass farming presently occupy a more

boutique market niche represented by higher consumer prices, thus complementing

rather than challenging the existing structure, are not fully sustainable and still

involve the killing of animals (McWilliams 2012). For this paper, then, I want to

turn to a more radical1 approach that hopes to solve most, if not all, of the

contemporary problems with meat.

Technology as Solution for Meat

While the piecemeal approaches to change discussed above have value, they rely on

modifications to consumer behavior to take effect—in diet, in budget, in time and

political action. An approach that is typically more lauded in the age of high

technology treats consumer behavior as relatively intractable, and attempts to design

‘‘better’’ technologies (ones that enable the same consumer behaviors, but remove

the ecological, ethical, or political problems affiliated with the previous design).

Problems are understood in the context of engineering rather than sociotechnical

transformation. We see this approach in a host of problem areas—from hybrid

automobiles to no-carb foods. Consumer actions can stay relatively the same, while

all the problems are engineered away. In the context of meat, one particular means

of achieving such a practice of technological replacement involves a more radical

modification to the process of making meat, focusing on the animal body itself (and

accompanied by an equally radical transformation of its immediate environment).

A potential solution currently2 receiving a large amount of press and emphasis

(see, for example, Wolfson 2002; Jones 2010; Specter 2011; and, in this journal,

Hopkins and Dacey 2008; Pluhar 2010) is in vitro meat. Here, the animal body is

seen as essentially plastic. In vitro meat technologies are contemporary techniques

aimed at producing meat protein in isolation, without the rest of the animal body, in

a sterile setting. This method involves using stem cell technology to culture meat

protein in a suitable medium,3 without the need for the rest of the animal body.

Instead, muscle cells are grown directly, either in thin sheets or on an edible

scaffold, fed with a nutrient serum, stimulated to simulate exercise, and harvested as

protein. In Culturing Life, Hannah Landecker examines how emerging techniques in

biotechnology, in her words, ‘‘[change] what it is to be biological’’ (2007, 232).

Successes in taking cell cultures out of the organic bodies they were found (as one

lab puts it, ‘‘Tissue culture [requires]… the creation of ‘a new type of body in which

1 Radical here is meant to describe the specific approach to cultivating meat, not the general attitude

toward technological salvation which reflects a kind of ecological modernization.2 While the present approach to in vitro meat reflects more recent advances in tissue culture and

experiments with stem cells, the idea of growing meat without the animal has a longer history. Scientific

experimentation with chicken heart tissue conducted by Alexi Carrell (see Jiang 2012) led to boosterism

(Churchill 1931) and trepidation (Oboler 1937; Pohl and Kornbluth 1969).3 That medium currently involves fetal bovine serum, which does not escape the need for animal bodies

in a continual phase of the process. But efforts to engineer a viable, vegetable based derivate for that

medium are ongoing.

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to grow a cell’’’(72)) and out of time itself (through freezing), enables much more

control and flexibility in terms of human manipulation of cells. The biological

becomes plastic. This plasticity works to maintain as many non-biological elements

of the technological system as possible, and instead to modify the problems out of

the body. These broader alterations in techniques with, as well as attitudes toward,

biological matter have been applied to the potential production of meat.

Many of the technology’s developers and advocates believe it to solve the myriad

problems associated with industrial meat production. A US group called New

Harvest promotes in vitro meat as solving the following issues (adapted from

Edelman et al. 2004):

• Composition—can control fat content, adding back in only specific fats, in

specific quantities, deemed desirable by current dietary standards;

• Disease control—reduce unsanitary conditions by eliminating waste generated

by animals or ecological systems, replaced by cells in media in labs;

• Efficiency—‘‘Inedible animal structures (bones, respiratory system, digestive

system, skin, and the nervous system) need not be grown’’;

• Exotic meats (rare and extinct)—the process could be applied to any starter

muscle culture, thus allowing for any manner of protein cultivation;4

• Reduction of animal use—cell lines could be cultivated from a single animal.5

These solutions, so offered, rely on the idea that the process of growing meat

without the animal can reach peak efficiency and efficacy in large part because the

entire process is controlled. Nothing is present that isn’t desired to be present, and

humans can dictate the terms of the protein. Isolated from the surrounding

environment and disease, applicable to any starter material, absent of fats or

proteins or sensations not deemed necessary or desirable. More to the point, this

form of production eliminates several things. It eliminates the uncertainty—the

risk—of natural foods. As indicated by a spokesperson for a processing facility,

‘‘natural ingredients are a ‘wild mixture of substances created by plants and animals

for completely non-food purposes—their survival and reproduction.’ These dubious

substances ‘come to be consumed by humans at their own risk’’’ (quoted in Pollan

2006, 97). It eliminates the environment in which animals would normally live. It

eliminates wasteful translation of energy into non-consumable elements. It

eliminates moral prohibitions against eating exotic animals, or animals at all,

because it eliminates the animal. And, what’s more, it eliminates the need for

consumers to change. Little else, that is, except a willingness to eat meat from this

process.

The potential of in vitro meat has attracted a lot of support from a variety of

entities and individuals concerned about the problems associated with meat

production and human over-consumption. Importantly, animal rights advocates and

4 Those versed in sci-fi may be familiar with Terry Bisson’s short story, ‘‘They’re Made Out of Meat’’

(Bisson 1991), or Michel Faber’s novel, Under the Skin (2000), both of which point out that, well,

humans are made of meat, which could be cultivated in the same process. Not so rare, but certainly exotic.5 It remains to be seen, in the age of terroir and other forms of specified or place-based food appreciation,

whether this technology would seek to erase animal origins, or create quality lines associated with

especially desirable animals.

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critics of industrialized meat production accept this technological pursuit as a

reasonable (Pluhar 2010; Singer 2013) or even necessary (Hopkins and Dacey 2008;

Schonwald 2009) attempt to solve the problems of meat. Some are enthusiastic

supporters (see Saletan 2006); others express their support as a kind of realism,

preferring more vegetarians, but seeing better meat as a better bet (see Deych 2005).

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) went so far as to issue a

mostly symbolic6 US$1 million prize for the first to create an affordable and

marketable in vitro chicken breast. All proponents see in vitro meat’s prime virtue

as being a better substitute—a way to allow people to maintain carnivorous

appetites while eliminating the associated evils.

Such enthusiasms notwithstanding, barriers exist to making this a viable source

of meat protein for the general public. Discussions of problems related to the

potential success of in vitro meat technologies in becoming a suitable replacement

for in vivo meat primarily focus on three aspects of the production process:

• Price—current protein production is very expensive. For example, in 2013, in

London, an in vitro meat burger was taste-tested in an effort to demonstrate

proof of concept and edibility. That single burger, funded by Google’s Sergey

Brin, was purported to cost US$325,000 (Fountain 2013a).

• Texture—that same burger was described as having the mouth feel of cake

(Fountain 2013b). This relates to a more fundamental biological problem. To

more closely mimic a typical muscle, researchers have to generate or replace

things like blood vessels, connecting tissue, and a suitable, edible, three-

dimensional scaffold.

• Acceptance—There are groups that seem primed for acceptance: the less finicky

(like the ardent fan of the hotdog eating contest), those with more specific needs

(like the deep space traveler), or members of the technological or gastronomical

avant-garde. However, a large number of people would have to find meat

produced in this method as functionally equivalent to more traditional meat

production techniques, and some remain very skeptical (see Cannavo 2010).

Hopkins and Dacey (2008) suggest that acceptance showed follow from a kind

of functional equivalence, arguing that: ‘‘What makes meat ‘real’ is its

constituent substance, not its mode of production’’ (586).

These barriers are presented as questions of engineering and of marketing.

Efforts like the taste test are part of the campaign to pave the way for acceptability.

Importantly, the ethical questions surrounding eating meat are not so much engaged

as eliminated. People are not asked to confront the ethics of eating meat—whether

in the basic question of killing animals, or in the technologically mediated question

of the human, animal, and ecological stresses exacerbated by industrialized systems

and capitalist logics. Instead, meat is made to reflect specific current values.

6 Critiques about the size of the award not even approaching the cost of the research (Engber 2008). The

contest recently expired without a winner, though PETA sees big positive strides being taken (‘‘PETA’s

‘In Vitro’…’’ 2014).

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Meat as Technology, Technology as Responsibility

I want to complicate the idea that in vitro meat solves the ethical dilemmas of

technologically mediated meat production, that it simply silences the PEEEEP. I

want to do this by collapsing the conceptual distance between technology and meat.

Rather than thinking about how technology has been used to make (and corrupt or

save) meat, we can think of meat as a technology. In order to proceed, I have some

work to do. Namely, why does it make sense to conceptualize meat as technology?

And how should we, in turn, conceptualize technology? In this section, I want to

explore meat as a result of a human process, and technology itself as a specific kind

of process—not a collection of objects as much as a series of relationships - between

ourselves and the natural world.

At first blush, one might find it odd to call meat a technology. It may be that

‘‘technology’’ is the problem—as Edgerton notes, we tend to associate it with

invention and innovation (2007). The old, the mundane, the ubiquitous tend to lose

such an identification, and little is older or more ubiquitous than meat. If we reflect

generally about what we identify as the technological, as the product of human

intervention in the natural world, of human intention on that world, meat fits in a bit

better. If we elaborate technologies as objects or as systems that enable humans to

act in the world, meat finds a place, as well. Meat is the product of active (and

increasing) human intervention. We saw that above. It is also an object—something

not simply reducible to the animal. Animals, of course, are a necessary part of the

process (at least for now, pre-in vitro), but so are ecosystems and, in most

contemporary encounters, distribution systems. We can claim that meat is a

technology without expanding that claim to animals themselves.

In fact, we typically do not directly confront animals when dealing with meat,

and we need not conflate the two. We confront a disarticulated substance, something

abstracted from its origins. Contemporary humans exist in an era that Bulliet has

dubbed ‘‘post-domesticity’’ (2005), referring to the state of affairs typified by fewer

people having direct contact with farm and working animals, and where animals

become more abstractions and the subject of anthropomorphic projections. The

sense of remove is not just historical; it is also philosophical and cultural. Fiddes

(1991) notes that humans tend to become discomfited by reminders of meat’s animal

origins. Or, as Vailles puts it, ‘‘we demand an ellipsis between animal and meat’’

(1994, 5), accomplished in part through an enforced distance between human

habitations and the area of slaughter (see also Edgerton 2007). For the modern eater,

meat, like most food, is something to consume as a means to something else, not a

focal point. As Gene Kahn, the founder of Cascadian Farm, told Michael Pollan,

‘‘‘This is just lunch for most people. Just lunch. We can call it sacred, we can talk

about communion, but it’s just lunch’’’ (2006, 153).

This objectification, the focus on use, gives meat characteristics similar to most

technological objects. Latour (2002) discusses technologies confronted as objects in

what he calls the ‘‘technological mode of existence,’’ wherein humans strive to

employ technologies (and adapt in order to employ them). These objects are means

of access to new possibilities (as a stable food supply might afford). Verbeek’s

concept of postphenomenology extends the notion of how objects mediate

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experiences—in terms of actions in, and interpretations of, the world (2005). The

point here is that technological objects may fade from view as technology, but do so

by altering the world in which we inhabit. We use meat as a means to be in the

world, and the fact that meat does not typically present itself as a technology for our

viewing only makes it much like many other technologies (like a pair of eyeglasses)

that we encounter.

But even as we push the meat-technology association, we should also seek to

trouble a too simple understanding of technology. That is, technology does not just

refer to objects. Technology also and at the same time refers to systems, and to

relationships. Latour (2002), for example, complements the technological mode

with what he calls the ‘‘moral mode’’—what we are forced to reckon with, when a

technological object ceases to function, for example. When the power goes out, or

the networks go down. Suddenly, a tool becomes a problem, and connects us to

modems and routers and support staff, to power lines and power plants, even to

manufacturing facilities and working conditions. If this begins to resemble our

discussion of meat in earlier sections, I mean it to. Our view of meat can change

when it becomes a part of a menu of choices, as something perhaps to avoid, and as

a method of expressing one’s values. Meat can be a means to accomplish something,

but only to the extent that it is also an end of a very complex chain of events—

animals, people, machines, locations, ecologies. How that chain of events gets

arranged is an important question, one that relates to our orientation to the natural

world and to the responsibilities we are willing to accept.

Thus, thinking about meat as a technology illustrates how we have made meat by

remaking animals and work and ecologies. The presence of meat as a stable, reliable

food, which allows humans to focus on other tasks, is itself made possible by

transformed, simplified, and controlled systems that contain animals, humans, and

ecologies. This mode of analysis helps capture some of the ironies we started with, and

also illuminates the responsibilities that develop within these ironies. We have become

responsible for causing and maintaining those systems and their possibility in particular

forms. That is, the process involves a triple transformation—of the dead animal body

into meat, of the living animal body into a more efficient protein producer, and of the

support systems (ecological and human) meant to care for those bodies into streamlined,

simplified, and single-minded versions of themselves. Each of these transformations are

a product of causation and maintenance, and represent a kind of responsibility.

Let’s tackle cause first. One way of exploring technology as responsibility is in

terms of causation—of bringing some thing into being as that specific thing. There

is a lot of complex philosophical history dealing with the idea of bringing something

into being, which exceeds the scope of this paper. Instead, I want to sketch the

legitimacy and limitations of the idea. Martin Heidegger is well known for invoking

the language of being and causation in the context of technology, and is useful for

thinking through the idea here. Heidegger’s notion of technology takes on the sense

of orientation to the world (1977).7 He revisits Aristotle’s four causes, emphasizing

7 Heidegger’s view of technology, especially in its relationship to Being, is not beyond critique. For

example, Verbeek (2005) offers a useful analysis of the limitations of Heidegger’s nostalgia for a more

pure form of relationship.

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the kind of cooperation necessary for bringing forth a thing in the world. The two

most relevant for us here are the material cause and the efficient cause. The material

cause is the, well, material. The stuff with which we work. And the efficient cause is

us. The maker. We have to work with the world in order to accomplish our goals.

Anyone who’s ever thrown a coffee mug on a pottery wheel can attest to this—

getting the clay to do what we want is not easy. The point I want to make is that

understanding technology is a way of accounting for a shared responsibility—of

bringing something into the world, in collaboration with the world. And thus what

we need to be able to evaluate is not whether we are responsible, but rather how that

responsibility is configured. How specific are our demands on the world? How much

do we require the world to adhere to our strict requirements?

Causation is a shared proposition. Humans cannot simply impose their will on the

natural world, but can work within the possibilities the world affords, and seek to

create something actual. This happens with meat. Humans have attempted to make

meat ‘‘better,’’ by bringing into being better protein machines that can be tinkered

with and adjusted, where all aspects of the process are controlled and, for the most

part, simplified. Take examples from chickens, which, according to Boyd, were ‘‘in

the vanguard of animal improvement efforts’’ (2001, 636; see also Ogle 2013). The

contemporary ‘‘meat-type’’ chicken (one with more white meat, and meatier

overall) can in part trace its origins to the A&P food stores’ Chicken of Tomorrow

contest in the 1940s (see Boyd 2001; Horowitz 2006). Efforts to breed these birds

relied upon desired characteristics, for specific expressions of protein and behavior,

and resulted in the creation of new types of birds that have helped to transform the

United States into a chicken-eating culture.

What we have caused, the kind of meat production system we become

responsible for, relies upon altered animals and ecosystems meant to reflect

simplification and control, and produce meat that is more fully disarticulated from

the context of its creation. The problems that we discussed earlier emerge because

of difficulties in managing this system, and in managing the animal body—in

exerting control and enforcing simplification. Qualities that chickens possess which

are not directly related to protein production—like desires for space and like

pecking orders—are now encountered as problems to be solved (through

transformations like cauterizing beaks). A systemic emphasis on efficiency leads

to pressures on birds to be standardized—in shape and behavior—and thus to

transcend the ‘‘twin obstacles’’ of Horowitz (2006, 131), how slowly animals grow

and how variable their shape. This leads to interventions that regenerate bodies (e.g.,

accelerated growth rates) and organize space and time for those bodies in ways that

support that value (e.g., through concentrating animals and employing specialized

diets), but generate other problems (e.g., animal bodies cannot support the

additional muscle mass). These types of chickens become simplified versions of

what is possible, emphasizing protein production over other traits, and, in an effort

to manage those bodies, human-driven ecologies are marshaled to generate a

supporting context. The system itself does not become unnatural—as Scott notes,

‘‘cultivation is simplification’’ (1998, 264). Rather, the nature within the chicken

just becomes less robust, more one-dimensional—simplified and in need of control.

Protein production. And the problems are emergent within these transformations.

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These simplifications radiate out to include the support systems—the ecologies—

that surround these versions of the chicken. As Striffler (2005) points out, what had

been a way for rural homesteads to produce supplemental protein and income in the

early part of the twentieth century in the US, chicken raising became a largely

consolidated, vertically integrated system controlling all parts of the chicken

lifecycle by the late 1980s. And these aspects of the lifecycle made uniform not just

the chicken body, but the actions and activities of the humans who interacted with

them in growing, hauling, and processing the birds. For example, growers would

contract with companies who promised to buy chickens, but only if those birds were

purchased from particular hatcheries, fed particular feed on particular schedules,

grown to particular specifications and harvested at particular times. Meanwhile,

consumers came to know chicken less as a whole bird, and more as a value-added,

processed component of tenders, nuggets, and patties (see also Horowitz 2006).

Now, let’s turn to maintenance. Responsibility also takes the shape of ensuring

the sustainability of objects and systems. These technological systems must be

maintained in order to ensure that a trajectory or course of action stays stable. It is

not enough to build a power plant—one has to keep it running. A classic example of

this form of maintenance comes from McPhee’s description of the Old River

Control Structure (ORC), separating the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers (1989).

ORC holds the Mississippi river along its current course, and because so much

depends upon that geographical assumption, the Army Corps of Engineers most

strive to maintain a system that supports an object (ORC) that is constantly under

threat of collapsing. Humans are attempting to express their intentionality on the

natural world, through and with technologies, and efforts to assert intention are

often directly proportional to the efforts needed to maintain such technologies. How

much do we want to assert our intentions onto the world? It’s important to see this

question as not having an exclusively negative valence. We desire to assert intention

on the world, so that we may have some sense of stability—that the world will

reflect our understanding of it. Or, as Theodor Adorno has put it, technology

‘‘allows humans to speak their own language’’ (quoted in Krakauer 1998, 93). Thus,

we need to realize that the more we assert our intentions, the more demands we

make on the world to be one thing and nothing else, the more the burden of

responsibility shifts to us to maintain the viability of the world that we created.

In terms of meat, we can reflect on the chicken production system and

transformations discussed above. The more we require animals to be uber-efficient

protein machines above all else, the more human systems became responsible for

those animals—in feeding them, in keeping them alive, in keeping them healthy, in

both reproduction and production processes. These animals don’t eat as much as

they are fed. They don’t reproduce as much as they are bred. Their lives are

maintained by human-driven ecosystems. There has developed a dependence that is

bred into the very beings we keep—as Pluhar (2010) notes, ‘‘[b]y changing

[domesticated animals’] evolutionary paths to render them beneficial to us, we have

incurred obligations of assistance’’ (459). The system of meat production is

maintained through active and continual intervention, to ensure the process

proceeds apace. Humans cannot just bring meat into being; they must also seek to

maintain the viability of the system that produces it as such. The system of meat

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production is maintained through active and continual intervention, to ensure the

process proceeds. Human cannot just bring meat into being, but seek to maintain its

viability.

How specifically is such responsibility configured? I want to suggest that it can

be understood in two ways connected both to causation and to maintenance:

knowledge and work—knowing and doing. To make natural systems behave or

function the way we want them to, we have to know how they work (at least well

enough). We have to have a functional theory. So, for example, Soper (1996)

discusses the idea of freeing human reproduction from the need for gametes from

opposite sexes, and notes that ‘‘we would have to know an awful lot more about

biological law and process before we could even begin to commit ourselves to such

a scenario’’ (33). Importantly, the knowledge we seek in this context is of a specific

kind, for a specific purpose—control. Speaking of state-sanctioned forestry

practices, Scott notes, ‘‘Certain forms of knowledge and control require a narrowing

of vision. The great advantage of such tunnel vision is that it brings into sharp focus

certain limited aspects of an otherwise far more complex and unwieldy reality. This

very simplification, in turn, makes the phenomenon at the center of the field of

vision more legible and hence more susceptible to careful measurement and

calculation’’ (1998, 11). In this context, to know is to know as a particular,

simplified, controllable object or process—something that Heidegger (1977)

referred to as standing reserve. As such, knowing is only the beginning. Human

systems also have to do the work, to continually assert control and manage the

simplicity we have imparted. We have to actively intervene. Food has to be grown

and shipped. Confinement structures have to be built. Biological processes have to

be understood. Animals have to be inseminated. Genes have to be coded, collected,

and inserted. Disassembly lines have to be choreographed. Fuel has to be burned.

The more we seek to assert intention in the world, the more we must have the

knowledge and do the work that enables such intention to be expressed and

stabilized.

Meat, the Future

Now, we are prepared to assess in vitro meat, the purported solution to so many of

the problems of industrialized meat. This technology is offered as a potential

solution to these problems, as long as the technical problems (texture and price) and

the cultural problems (acceptance) can be overcome. But within the existing

framework of assumptions, in vitro meat looks like the holy grail of the food

world—it solves all of the problems outlined above, without asking much of

anything from the consumer, which is a large part of its appeal. Our present

assessment, however, is not of a technology that overcomes obstacles persistent in

previous technology/meat collaborations, but as one means of making meat among

many. How does it understand the natural world? What kinds of responsibilities

does it accept or demand?

For in vitro meat, the kind of nature we want is an almost direct expression of our

intentions. Its chief virtues are how malleable the components are, how simplified

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the output is, how controllable the process is. In fact, we end up doubling down on

something, simplification, that was identified as the source of problems in the

previous industrialized system. Or, rather, simplification was the desire, but animal

bodies kept being more complicated. Here, we eliminate everything we don’t

want—from waste to nervous systems to behavior. Winston Churchill expressed the

desire well before it was possible, in a 1931 essay titled ‘‘50 Years Hence’’: ‘‘We

shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or

wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.’’ He was off by

about 30 years, but the sentiment is familiar. By building protein up from cells (not

harvesting it from a body), we produce only what we want (or at least, we hope).

Such simplification, of course, is only achieved through control. Here, again,

control was a problem, because animals weren’t fully controllable—and efforts

were ad hoc and ineffective. Animals would behave in unproductive ways, react in

unhealthy ways. In vitro meat also doubles down on control—building up only what

is desired, introducing only what is useful. Importantly, for the viability of this

technology, not only is an extreme level of control a virtue, it is also a necessity.

The productive environment has to be kept pure, lest unwanted substances take

advantage of such a fecund context and corrupt the process. So, for example,

because of how fertile these bioreactors are, as one researcher relates to Michael

Specter in an article for the New Yorker, ‘‘We need completely sterile conditions. If

you accidently add a single bacterium to a flask, it will be full in 1 day’’ (37). In

addition, researchers must be able to control how the cells divide, so they don’t

become what he calls ‘‘genetic miscreants’’ (ibid.). But this purity reflects much of

the support for in vitro meat in the popular press and from animal rights groups, who

tout it as this exact kind of solution—one that can limit meat to only exactly what

we want it to be—in composition, and in nature.

To achieve this control, the maintenance done must be increased. The work of

cultivating muscle cells into what resembles a muscle requires a high level of

understanding—the body can be removed from the process only to the extent that it

is understood. What a muscle is, how it works, how it comes into its specific form,

what role the body plays in giving shape to the muscle. How to manage and

cultivate cells, layered and stimulated. Previously, when meat was produced in the

context of the animal body, one did not have to fully understand how that process

worked to achieve a particular result. Granted, people sought greater and greater

understanding in order to exert more control, but that knowledge was not

complete—see all of those problems—and did not need to be to create muscle. Such

an equation changes in in vitro systems. By removing the body, humans have taken

on the responsibility of understanding and functionally replacing the body (and the

ecology) necessary to produce this form of protein.

Such responsibility also involves work—we not only seek to understand the

functional necessities, but also to provide them. The interactions caused by a body

moving itself through space must be replaced (electrical stimulation/flexed sheets),

the delivery of nutrients and removal of wastes (nutrient baths/filtering; scaffolding/

limited thickness), the protection of tissue from contaminants, done by the skin and

immune system (sterile environments). The various procedures must be taken up by

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human-driven systems to keep the in vitro technology viable, to make meat in this

way.

So, the possibility of meat made through this technique presents a lot of potential

benefits, highlighted by greater control over the environment and the animal body,

such that meat becomes precisely more of what we want it to be—not reliant upon a

sentient body, not contaminated by bodily functions or less controlled environ-

ments, tailored to an idealized, healthy human body. These benefits are achieved

through an orientation to nature that requires even greater responsibility for it, as

simplified and maintained by human-driven systems—a world made possible, more

fully reflective of human visions of it.

Conclusion

This increasing responsibility reflects an historical tendency to exert more control

over all facets of the meat production system, including the lives of food animals.

This control is made possible through an increasing responsibility for simplified

versions of these animals that can only survive within highly managed ecosystems

(e.g., those in the factory or, with in vitro, those in the laboratory). These efforts are

pursued—increasing simplification and control—in order to leave the role deemed

essential, that of the consumer, as unchanged as possible. They address the

multitude of problems associated with meat by changing how meat is made. In vitro

meat solves the problems associated with simplification and control of animals

associated with industry by asserting those imperatives more fully—furthering their

logic. It achieves this through an orientation that sees the natural world as

essentially plastic—manipulatible, changeable, made to reflect, not shape, specific

human priorities.

To that end, the burden of responsibility shifts even more fully onto human

systems in a world made in our own image. Humans, that is, have to maintain all of

this creation through knowledge systems (to manipulate components, one must

know how those components work, and not be wrong) and energy systems (to

manipulate components, one must now take over activities that would otherwise be

done by other, non-human systems). These systems include connections to

production networks, distribution networks, and consumption networks, but also

frameworks of understanding and patterns of human and social behavior. In other

words, in vitro meat involves a translation of responsibility from natural systems to

human systems. It also represents a transition from the possible to the necessary,

where we bear the burden not only of knowing and doing, but of getting it right. To

be wrong would not just be inconvenient, but catastrophic to a tightly coupled

system that must now anticipate more fully the relevant contingencies (see Perrow

2011, 156). Historically, we know that our knowledge systems have been, and

continue to be, incomplete. So, in a world where failure is likely, what happens

when we need it to be impossible? Failure has no place here.

It’s also important to remember that we are talking here about meat, about

chicken, for example. Which has meant that we were also talking about animals—

about beings other than us. Thus our rightward migration also accompanies a kind

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of disappearance or invisibility of that animal, because in in vitro what we know the

chicken as are the very knowledge and energy systems that condition that life (what

we understand the cells to be, and how they can be made to grow, and what we add

to the process). The more we exert controls over that life, through the employment

of knowledge and the application of work, the more that life becomes simply an

extension of human designs. And animals fade into the background, rather than

being brought to the forefront of our confrontations with meat, with nature, and with

our ethical priorities. For many, this is the appeal of the technology (though

questions remain about how ‘‘animal-free’’ it actually is—cf. fn 3).

But, while I’m not suggesting that we should eat animals, or that animals can

only be known in the context of eating them, this process of materially erasing the

animal from meat can only occur in a nature that does human bidding—a nature that

more fully reflects human intention. Rather than confront the ethical questions of

engaging animals and humans and ecologies in the context of meat, we turn those

questions into engineering ones. This process creates animals that become

something fully realizable in the lab and fully replaceable in the production of

protein. Lewis Lapham, bemoaning the current place of animals within food

systems and cultural awareness, notes:

Out of sight and out of mind, the chicken, the pig, and the cow lost their

licenses to teach. The modern industrial society emerging into the twentieth

century transformed them into products and commodities, swept up in the tide

of economic and scientific progress otherwise known as the conquest of

nature. Animals acquired the identities issued to them by man, became labels

marketed by a frozen-food or meat-packing company, retaining only those

portions of their value that fit the formula of research tool or cultural symbol –

circus or zoo exhibit, corporate logo or Hollywood cartoon, active ingredient

in farm-fresh salmon or genetically modified beef (2013, 17).

The animal loses its otherness—it becomes only what we want it to be. This

process is furthered, rather than alleviated, in the context of in vitro meat

technologies.

This kind of erasure, this kind of ‘‘impoverishment of experience’’ (Warkentin

2006, 100) created through the elimination of the otherness of animals, also reduces

our own needs to confront difficult ethical questions. Rather than confront our

preconceptions and our practices, we expect the world to be modified around them.

This technological solution only works to the extent that we manage the increased

engineering complexity associated with a less complex ethical landscape for the

user. In Living with Complexity, Norman (2011) references Tesler’s law of the

conservation of complexity, which suggests that in order to make something less

complex for the user, that thing must become more complex for the designer (46).

This translation of complexity, as embodied in in vitro meat, does not just make it

simpler for the user. It anticipates a simple user. And as such, in this process humans

can be understood as becoming simplified as well—ethically stunted individuals

less capable of change in response to current problems (yet somehow more capable

of taking on the responsibilities necessitated by the technologies made essential by

this approach).

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Thus, in assessing any technology, it’s important not just to examine its technical

attributes, but also its worldview. It’s important, that is, to imagine a future that not

only contains in vitro meat, but the attitudes and responsibilities that make such a

technology possible. These include the view of the natural world as plastic, the

virtue of control that becomes a necessity, the increasing responsibility human

systems take on in maintaining the technologies they create, and the decreased

complexity associated with the user of those technologies. The central ethical

question is, what kind of world, what kind of human, what kind of nature do we

anticipate in our technological designs? It is a question both of capability and of

desire.

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