http://www.aeonmagazine.com/nature-and-cosmos/in-vitro-meat-demands-a-whole-new-food-ethics/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AeonMagazineEssays+%28Aeon+Magazine+Essays%29

The idea that IVM might have a part to play in a cleaner, fairer food system runs counter to a central idea put forward by many critics of industrial agriculture: that farming needs to be based more on traditional, natural, biological and ecological systems not artificial mono-cultures. Surely in vitro meat would be the most artificial mono-culture of them all.

If IVM is the greenest, most animal-friendly meat, yet it is even more artificial than a pitiful, intensively reared broiler chicken, then no one can maintain the fantasy that bucolic nature has a monopoly on good, ethical food.

For those who have campaigned for a more ethical and sustainable food system, IVM is a good test of where their values really lie: with hard-nosed ethics or soft-focus sentiment. After all, it is hard for anyone concerned about the environment or animal welfare to disagree with Post’s claim that ‘from an ethical view [IVM] can have only benefits’. Cultured meat has the potential to replace lame, belching, farting, grain-guzzling, confined beasts with clean, safe, sustainable meat, direct from the factory floor.

Interestingly, none of the objections (to IVM) raised by the two major UK vegetarian societies have anything to do with the two main ethical reasons for giving up meat in the first place: concern for animal welfare and the environment.

Why should there be such reluctance among vegetarians to welcome IVM when, from an animal-welfare point of view, it is nothing other than good news?

The only logical way to make sense of the reluctance of many vegetarians to back IVM is that their choices are not as driven by animal welfare and environmental considerations as they — assume.

Vegetarians, are at risk of confusing their base disgust and distaste with high principle. ‘Natural’ food feels right, ‘synthetic’ food feels wrong, so they are all-too-quick to dismiss the evidence that lab meat might be a good thing after all.