Revolutionary is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot these days, especially in the technology sector, but how many allegedly game-changing ideas live up to the billing? The cultivated meat industry held out a promise that truly merited the term: all the delicious meat anyone could want, with no harm to animals and no harm to the planet.
If it could be done, it really would change the world. But as Joe Fassler reports in a recent guest essay, things haven't worked out that way.
Fassler became interested in the industry when he met representatives of a vegan food company who, to his surprise, just wanted to talk about meat — about creating it, cruelty-free, in huge, gleaming factories. He was riveted. And concerned.
"I understood the destruction and brutality of conventional meat production," he told me via Signal late one night as we were finishing up the editing process on his essay. "But I also wasn't sure the world was ready for the shock to the system that cultivated meat would represent. What would happen to all those farms? Did a few companies stand to consolidate control over the food system even further, and what were the implications of that? In the early days, it felt to me like the tech was vastly outpacing our ability to think through its potentially radical social and political ramifications."
It was only gradually that he realized the industry's big promises weren't coming true. "Few in the media," he said, "myself included, had thought to fact-check the broad, messianic claims the companies were making."
Amid a tsunami of hype and billions of dollars of investment, he said, calling the industry's bluff "felt like trying to walk through a crowded subway platform when everyone else is walking the opposite way." But people working in the industry knew the real deal. And a lot of them were willing to talk to him about it.
His story, months in the making, is the culmination of six years of reporting. Even more than it shaped his view of the industry, it made him doubt that any commercial offering at all could really bring about a revolution in our food supply, let alone our entire society. That's an idea that also resonates through his novel, "The Sky Was Ours," which is forthcoming in April. In the novel, the disruptive technology is a pair of enormous wings that allow human beings to fly, yet fails to change the world as promised. But truth is stranger than fiction: "Cultivated meat turned out to be a perfect example," he wrote to me, "of why we can't solve the problems of capitalism with more capitalism."
Read the guest essay:
Continue reading the main storyHere's what we're focusing on today:
Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyWe hope you've enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times.
Games Here are today's Mini Crossword, Wordle and Spelling Bee. If you're in the mood to play more, find all our games here.
Forward this newsletter to friends to share ideas and perspectives that will help inform their lives. They can sign up here. Do you have feedback? Email us at opiniontoday@nytimes.com.
If you have questions about your Times account, delivery problems or other issues, visit our Help Page or contact The Times.
Continue reading the main story
No comments:
Post a Comment