Banning Lab-Grown Meat Could Hurt Animal Farmers
Better investment planning could lead to everybody winning
As a country, to not support innovation is to put yourself behind all other countries fostering that innovation. To outlaw a particular type of research while other countries invest more into such research is to allow other countries to reap the rewards without you. Imagine redoing school except there is one subject every year you could not take while everyone else studied that subject. To colleges and employers, you would be less desired.
Italy is currently making itself unattractive by restricting itself from taking part in the expanding field of research and production of lab-grown meat [1] while the rest of the world continues to invest more in their efforts [2, 3, 4, 5].
Italian government cites health and food tradition as the major reasons for the ban. Here, we will focus on the appeal to tradition argument, though the health argument is just as dubious.
Invest in the Future
The British owned most of the world at one point in history through the invention of capitalism which required the ruling class to take a risk on radical new ideas instead of doing what has always been done [6]. The British were not smarter, more skilled, stronger, or more rich. What allowed them to expand was the willingness to invest in a product or procedure to turn a profit later. Land and humans are finite resources that one can demand only such much from them. Instead, finding ways to work more efficiently or creating tools that increase production can lead to a more rich society.
The best modern example of “invest in the future or be left behind” is from Dubai. Dubai historically makes most of its money from oil. However, the leaders of Dubai understand oil is a finite resource and that the world is actively moving away from oil. To protect themselves, they are investing money in infrastructure and business to foster research in science and technology, thus securing a future other oil-only producing countries may not have the opportunity to live in [7].
For Italy to ban an emerging sector is to close its doors on not only being a leader but even allowing itself to evolve with the times. As the rest of the world is investing in the future, Italy is choosing to remain in the past. Such actions mean they will not reap any of the economic rewards. To profit, one must invest. This is a tale as old as Capitalism itself.
Banning lab-grown meat ultimately hurts traditional animal farmers by limiting their future job prospects. Animal farmers will one day wake up to a world where lab-grown meat is in demand, and no one is available to pay for the expensive, unhealthy, polluting remains of once-living animals. These farmers will be out of a job with handicapped mobility due to their lack of skills and knowledge. Instead, Italy could be investing in lab-grown meat and including traditional animal farmers in that research and production.
Transfarmation - A Model for Policy
Transfarmation helps animal farms stop farming animals and instead farm plants. Multiple organizations work on this with numerous success stories such as Mercy for Animal [8], Rancher Advocacy Program [9], and in Europe, we have TransFARMation [10]. The process of moving from animal agriculture to plant agriculture is a multiple joint effort involving plant farmers, economists, and government assistance with grants. This is a win-win because farmers maintain an income without any bitterness towards animal activists or government officials who banned a particular product. No need to sue to tell oat milk companies they cannot call their product “milk” if one is no longer in the dairy industry but instead in the oat industry.
A similar program to transfarmation could be set up for animal farmers in Italy (or anywhere for that matter). The plan is simple: divest in farming animals and have those farmers join the production of lab-grown meat. The key is government grants. Having public money available for farmers to learn a new trade is imperative to avoid economic disruptors like lab-grown meat.
Luddites was a 19th-century movement against new technology as new machines were going to take their jobs. They feared the machines were going to render them obsolete. Instead, the government and industry could have invested in the new technology and their people so that everyone wins. A similar story played out recently with the Writer’s Guild strike where, among other things, writers feared AI would take their jobs [11]. How many times does this story need to play out? Even if we selfishly only care about the economic output of our country and not about the individuals that make up our society, we need to invest in people’s futures to allow continuous economic value to be created amongst new technological disruptions.
The More Fundamental Problem of Tradition
Another argument can be made, though a less powerful one since money makes the world go round, not logic and morals. However, given the Italian government’s reason for banning research and production of lab-grown meat is rooted in a common logical fallacy known as an appeal to tradition, this should be ringing bells to alarm the masses that something is not right [12].
Without fear of sounding hyperbolic or dramatic, I believe “tradition” is the most evil word in the English language. Tradition renders otherwise thinking minds useless. Tradition looks into the past for answers about our future. Tradition says no to logic, reason, and evidence, and instead takes the simple route of "We have always done it this way."
The worst part about tradition is that at some point in history, the tradition was a new thought and a new practice. If defenders of a tradition go back in history far enough, they were at one point radical. Defenders of tradition are stuck in a mental block where they believe this is how things always worked. Traditions had to start somewhere.
So to staunchly defend a position that was once radical, unwilling to consider alternatives, simply because “this is what we have always done” when we in fact have not always done this, is a complete violation of sanity. And when the position involves the mass killing of sentient beings, contributes to deforestation, water waste, greenhouse gases, biodiversity loss, and increases in diseases such as heart disease and type II diabetes, that position needs to be under the most critical analysis of all. Criticism should not be swept under the rug in the name of tradition. Such “reasoning” is an insult to all those who have suffered and will suffer under animal agriculture.
Too much is at stake. While it is easier to pretend we know what our forefathers and foremothers wanted, we should instead ask if this destructive path of animal agriculture is what they would have wanted for us. Maybe they did farm and kill animals to eat. But if they knew it was aiding in the destruction of ourselves and the planet and causing the suffering to animals well beyond how our ancestors farmed, would they be proud we are hard headly plowing forward in their name? I hope the younger generation solves problems that make their lives and their children more well-off, and that they do not waste time with logical fallacies trying to do what they believe I wanted.
Conclusion
Instead of asking what we have done previously, we should be asking who and what we want to be in the future. Possibilities have never been more open which is why traditionalists have been louder than ever. We can do better, have to do better, and Italy could be leading this charge instead of fighting it.
[2] https://apnews.com/article/cultivated-meat-lab-grown-cell-based-a88ab8e0241712b501aa191cdbf6b39a
[3] https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/cultivated-meat-japans-sustainable-future/
[6] Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
[7] https://www.popsci.com/dubai-science-tech-innovation/
[8] https://thetransfarmationproject.org/
[9] https://rancheradvocacy.org/
[10] https://www.transfarmation.org/home-1
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Writers_Guild_of_America_strike
[12] https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Appeal-to-Tradition