Imagine it is a hundred years from now. Could be as little as thirty. Someone cooks you a perfect fillet steak and then tells you that it was produced by tissue culture. Is your attitude to the meal you just consumed changed by the knowledge?
Mine would be. I would be pleased that no animal had to be killed to satisfy my hunger. I would be pleased that there was now a way for me to be omnivorous without having to consider the welfare of the animals I am consuming. Until we have tissue culture, it will remain a priority for me to encourage suppliers to make the lives of the creatures I ingest as pleasant as possible right up until their lives are switched off as unexpectedly, for them, and as painlessly as possible. Um.. the creatures; not the suppliers. As an example of this sort of thing; I am pleased by the sudden rise in the popularity of free-range eggs. I look forward to this philosophy spreading to other animal products.
Our species is clearly supposed to be omnivorous and it takes a little effort for us to operate successfully as vegetarians. Our teeth are dead giveaway on this. Even the fact that our jaws have become smaller of the last million years or so supports the idea that we were eating more meat (and cooking it). There is a biological imperative at work here that exists independently of all human constructs – such as “rights”. However, as with many things, our mental capabilities have reached a point where we can consider more sophisticated implications of our actions, even if they are instinctive, and we can empathise with others, including the beasts of the fields.
It has always seemed clear to me that treating other things in a way that you would not wish to be treated yourself is bad for one’s self-esteem. I believe this is a profound thing that extends even to inanimate objects. For example, if we make robots that are more or less humanoid, I reckon that it would be a sign of mental weakness to maltreat such a machine. “Kicking the cat” is wrong. Kicking the robot would be wrong as well.
Producing all meat for consumption by tissue culture would have other implications. We would still needs large crops to produce the materials to feed the tissue culture machines. We wouldn’t need the huge herds any more though. We should also be able to trap and process the waste products of the tissue culture factories so as to reduce the environmental burden of producing the vast quantities of meat we consume.
We are very good at narrowing our worries down to what we feel we are capable of addressing. As I write this I do not contemplate the misery and death of the innocents in the Sudan. Likewise I do not consider the confusion and terror of the line of cattle trudging into the abattoir. But the problem is there. It lurks. I don’t like it. I try not to kid myself about how the world really works. One vote at a time, one purchase at a time, we need to work on solving these lurking problems. The sooner we can make large scale tissue culture viable the better. Until then we should treat our animals as well as practicable and not delude ourselves about the true nature of the world as it currently functions.