Article
ID: CBB046698568

Meat Mimesis: Laboratory-Grown Meat as a Study in Copying (2020)

unapi
Synthetic biology; bioengineering Food science; food technology Synthetic food; Laboratory food Meat 21st century 21st century

This article examines an emerging form of contemporary food biotechnology, laboratory-grown or “cultured” meat, that often seeks to copy conventional “in vivo” animal flesh by using in vitro techniques. The ultimate goal of cultured meat research is to devise an alternative to the environmentally damaging and ethically undesirable infrastructure that makes “cheap” industrial-scale meat possible. Formal research into cultured meat has been underway since the early 2000s. However, after almost two decades of experiments, it is still unclear if this avenue of research will produce a viable meat product at scale, or if it is even possible to perfectly copy the physical characteristics of in vivo meat. There are technical limitations on scientists’ ability to reproduce the precise textures, tastes, and overall “mouthfeel” of familiar types of meat gleaned through butchery. Cultured meat proceeds from a premise we might call “biological equivalency,” the view that animal cells grown in a bioreactor will have the same characteristics as their in vivo counterparts, and it breaks from a standing approach in food science that we might call “sensorial equivalency,” which seeks to reproduce not meat itself but rather the sensory experience of eating meat, usually starting with a substrate of plant cells. This article, which draws from five years of ethnographic fieldwork in the cultured meat movement, seeks to illuminate not only the historical but also the philosophical questions raised by efforts to copy meat. Drawing on the work of the intellectual historian Hans Blumenberg, this article concludes with an exploration of mimesis itself, understood as the imitation of nature.

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Authors & Contributors
Adams, William Mark
Bensaude-Vincent, Bernadette
Bueno, Otávio
Calvert, Jane
Cobb, Matthew
Dan-Cohen, Talia
Journals
Science, Technology, and Human Values
The Bridge: Journal of the National Academy of Engineering
Perspectives on Science
Public Understanding of Science
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Publishers
Princeton University
Harvard University Press
University of Iowa Press
Yale University Press
Concepts
Synthetic biology; bioengineering
Biology
Science and technology studies (STS)
Public understanding of science
Science and law
Public opinion
Time Periods
21st century
20th century
20th century, late
19th century
Places
United States
United Kingdom
Iceland
Denmark
European Union
Finland
Institutions
Select Agent Program
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