I haven't eaten meat in 58 years. Ethical dilemma aside, what would be the point at this stage in my life. It would feel like a stumble and fall at the end of a marathon.
this post was submitted on 31 May 2026
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For meat consumers. We can't expect other cultures to immediately abandon their dietary practices.
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I feel like I'm living in blade runner. The buffalo are being evicted (again), and meat is growing in the lab instead.
I think precision fermentation is, at least in the near term, more scalable and energy efficient than lab meat. Basically, instead of recreating entire animal cells, microbes are engineered to create animal proteins directly, which can then be used in dairy and egg products without needing animal cells. Lab-cultured meat might take longer to catch on due to cost and consumer perception.
We spend 800 to 1200 times the money subsiding the meat industry ($38 billion dollars) we spend on research grants on alternative meat. Then oligarchs in the slaughter industry use a fraction of the profits generated by it to lobby the state legislature and the congress to ban the cultured meat from the market.
Then we have to solve dairy/poultry Crafts.
Basically, instead of recreating entire animal cells, microbes are engineered to create animal proteins directly, which can then be used in dairy and egg products without needing animal cells.
Thats almost literally what fungi already do.
i dont think its viable in scale. maybe for specific needs its an optimal choice. you still need biopsies to get cells from animals, so i would say its more vegetarian than vegan (so its still exploitative to animals). in general people can already have a vegan diet today. theres no need to invent anything.
more vegetarian than vegan (so its still exploitative to animals)
What if we use a stock culture?
if there was a way to totally not have animals in the process, then yes it would be technically vegan. maybe it will be super viable. but again, i think on a mass scale it is more efficient to just produce crops. communal agriculture is dead simple. while lab-cultivation requires lab equipment, which needs a whole new production process. you need to think about accessibility also, and its hard to beat accessibility of seeds and ground.
It's a distraction from the actually necessary work of getting people to quit eating animals.
Please stop eating animals.
I'm vegan and I've always thought culture grown meat is a frivilous waste of time and money. It doesn't even make sense to me from an ethical angle either. Eating meat to me is the same thing as murder and cannibalism, and the explanation I always get is: lab meat is for people who wanna be vegan but still have cravings for meat. So should there be lab grown human bodies for people who have cravings for murder? That's genuinely how I see it.
Vegan food already exists and it's awesome. Furthermore religious vegetarians have existed in India for thousands of years and they have a rich culinary history that didn't have to resort to imitation meat
So should there be lab grown human bodies for people who have cravings for murder?
I'm going to say that yes, if there was a rehabilitation program in an non-capitalist/ethical state that integrated this after confirming the lab grown cadaver was truly not alive, I'd be fine with this.
This seems similar to the "all coal is bad" stance people take with China, without recognizing that there will likely be some coal around for a long time and if it's inevitable, might as well try to make it as non-harmful to animals as possible.
If anyone starts growing full human bodies then I personally will kill everyone involved and burn down the facility. We're not doing profane rituals to create undead monstrosities and I feel like I shouldn't have to say that. No one is allowed to be frankenstein and if anyone tries I'm gonna kill them with a gun.
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isn't lab grown meat something that straight up wasn't alive and thus couldn't suffer. what's wrong with that, if the issues with meat consumption are climate harm and the suffering of living animals in its creation /genq. for what it's worth if i could eat imitation human meat that didn't come from previously alive human i'd fuck that meal up
What's wrong with it is that I think it's weird to want to viscerally simulate something I regard as immoral. I'd also feel the same thing about virtual reality r*pe or whatever. I'm not someone who wants to eat meat though, real or artificial, so I don't understand the impulse.
Culture grown meat is literally unholy necromancy for the sake of satiating bloodlust. I don't know what other words to use. There are probably hundreds of better uses for growing flesh in a petri dish, like making stem cells or replacement organs or something, but there's something inherently evil about wanting to do it for food.
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Eating meat to me is the same thing as murder and cannibalism
It requires killing an animal at some point to do it with any consistency yes, unless you were to only seek out animals that die of natural causes or something. Is eating deer meat cannibalism though? No. Cannibalism has a very specific meaning and it's trivializing of that meaning to say that a human eating a deer, for example, is cannibalism.
It's a very "I live in an industrial world of abundance of food production" view to be able to look at human history and judge the majority of people in it as cannibals because they ate other animals as food sometimes. Odds are you are descended from people who at times had no choice but to do that to survive. Now does this mean those people all used factory farming? No. That part is a recent invention. Treating wildlife like nothing more than a mindless industrial resource is a recent cultural invention and factory farming practices are twisted. I have no problems agreeing with a judgment like that.
The problem with your view is that it shoves indigenous peoples who treat wildlife with respect but still use it as a source of food sometimes, and societies that mass consume factory farmed animals raised in horrific conditions, into the same narrow box. It's the same type of thinking that leads people to saying all states are bad, even AES states. The form something takes can matter a lot.
I believe non-human animals are people on the same level as a human and should have the same rights as humans. Eating a deer is cannibalism because it's consumption of a person's flesh.
I'm also do actually agree that large industrial meat production is a worse thing than subsistence hunting and small-scale agriculture. I know the difference and yeah, one is preferable to the other. Unfortunate realities are better than mass exploitative death. I'm still a vegan though and believe in promoting non-human personhood and all the legal rights that comes with.
I believe non-human animals are people on the same level as a human and should have the same rights as humans.
Not sure how you'd manage that logistically because plenty of animals do not have societies anything like the way that humans do and can't be communicated with like equals via spoken or written language, with only minor successes at times in figuring out ways to communicate with them. There are domesticated animals that can be trained to respond to keywords, but I wouldn't call that a conversation.
So as far as I can tell, we're either looking at major advances in science to be able to communicate with non-human animals, at which point the form of communication and the way they perceive the world may still be very alien to us and hard to contextualize in our societies, or we're looking at anthropomorphizing things about them that aren't human, which is a problem in its own way as it presumes that surface level appearance of human-like traits are deriving from the same basis as that of humans. And anthro'izing is not the same as respecting as a unique species. It's saying "you must be doing this because [it reminds me of something I'd do]." It also means creating some pretty arbitrary lines as to what constitutes intelligent enough life to be deserving of these "rights". Else-wise we can end up with somebody going to prison for killing ants in their home, which I would hope you agree would be an absurd end result of pursuing such rights.
To reiterate though, I would agree that animals should not be mistreated, like as in factory farming. That is a concrete issue with well documented problems and can be actioned upon in a way that this abstraction about rights and personhood cannot be actioned upon.
When I say afford animals the same legal rights as a human I do seriously mean it in that way. If a human attacks you, then yeah you defend yourself. If ants are in your home without being invited, then yes you get them to leave and if that fails you use violence. You'd do the same with a human. I'm a vegan, not a pacifist. And if a legal group wants to represent the ants and say they have squatters' rights then I actually think that would be kinda fun and we should have those discussions.
I don't know what level of communication is really necessary to say non-human animals deserve human rights. There are nonverbal humans and they still have full legal rights despite not being capable of communicating.
Like a coworker of mine once asked if since I believe animals are people, if a duck should be allowed to drive a car. And I replied that if a duck is able to pass a driving test and line up at the DMV to get a license, then yeah let that duck drive. Same as any other person. I'll give any duck who learns how to drive a 1994 Toyota corolla.
And if a legal group wants to represent the ants and say they have squatters’ rights then I actually think that would be kinda fun and we should have those discussions.
I think that'd be a sure way to worsen the reputation of vegans and make mockery of concerns about things like factory farming.
There are nonverbal humans and they still have full legal rights despite not being capable of communicating.
Nonverbal humans can learn other ways to communicate (such as sign) and they are born human, so it's easy to understand them as belonging to the human species and thus deserving of the same rights. It's a world of difference between that and trying to understand why any given non-human species does what it does, how it perceives the world, and so on.
I was gonna argue that people like flavor and variety and while yes Indian vegetarians (important distinction since the west pushes veganism and dairy also adds a lot of variety) have a lot of variety in their cuisine, if you're asking a society already used to a vast breadth of animal products to just give them up, most people will miss that. Indians growing up vegetarian can't miss what they didn't already widely experience
But then i realized we don't need lab grown meat we just need better isolation and synthesis of the flavor compounds that are present because there's already a lot of good work done on recreating vegan meaty textures so if you can make those taste perfect then what's the point of actually growing it outside of, as you said, to engage in a profane necromantic ritual
There's no way it'll ever be as efficient as eating plants so its a nonstarter for feeding the world.
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From what I have read the current stuff is basically artificially flavored jello with some vat grown animal cells thrown in for branding purposes.
I think its more feasible to develop some new meat like substance from yeast and reprogrammed bacteria than to make real chunks of meat from existing animal cells.
The composition of muscle is too complicated to build in a lab. Maybe some day they might make some non sentient biological machine that grows meat that can be harvested but I imagine that level of genetic engineering is many decades from where we are.
hey, i just logged on to post the vaguely inflammatory open ended question for the day...
What time is it, folks?!
Please stop eating our animal comrades. That is all.
I am a vegetarian. You will need to convince the Global South too, especially legions that are basically dependent on meat, like Mongolia, Central Asia, and the Middle-East. The transitional doesn't happen in a day.
Not eating animal products is a moral question, but it is not achieved by moral arguments. I have never encountered a consistent moral framework that can argue for exploiting animals in order to eat them or their produce, but winning arguments is not how you change peoples behaviour. The question of eating animal products is purely habitual and cultural and by extension social, thus changing many peoples diets is a question of changing many peoples habits and culture. So there is little "convincing" to do in a sense, maybe on an individual level for a few. The only way to transform the diets of larger swats of populations in a short time is cultural revolution, otherwise - with concerted effort- there will be a gradual shift over time.
The question of eating animal products is purely habitual and cultural and by extension social
It is primarily logistical and a matter of survival, which is why it's so normalized throughout history.
Then there's factory farming, which at this point is not so much an extension of habit, as it is an extension of the power of capital and industry maintaining itself for its own sake. It's much the same reason that the US is still dependent on cars to an absurd degree, with high speed trains passed over as an option to build for decades on end.
These are two very different things and veganism as an individualist ideology with moralist arguments largely seems to have spawned as a reaction to factory farming, not as a reaction to subsistence hunting. And as far as I can tell, it is largely a failure of an ideology that doesn't seem to do much more than get a fraction of people to boycott eating meat. Which I don't think is because it's using moral arguments, but because it's isolating individualist ideology as a response to collective industrial production. And it gets bogged down too much in the entire relationship between humans and non-humans, instead of focusing on dismantling the obvious systemic abuse. I would say it's similar to western atheist thought in that way. It's not being holistic, but is instead getting lost in the weeds of one particular facet of things.
We are in agreement, I think, that you need collective power to change these things on a large scale. But I would argue it's largely not a cultural issue, but is instead almost entirely an extension of the need to survive by eating food. Which capital plays into when justifying factory farming. There are the fanatics who insist on meat as some kind of pivotal thing inherently, but these appear to be a minority and if factory farming was ended, along with matching increase in availability of other proteins to compensate, the price would rise and it would somewhat naturally transform into a luxury item. There would be a reaction, certainly, but food is food and the overriding concern is whether people have it to eat, not where it comes from; which is why factory farming has gotten away with what it does for so long in the first place. This isn't to say nobody ever cares where their food comes from, but it's always secondary to "do I have food to eat"; otherwise, you end up dead. It's for this same reason that the boycott element of veganism so often ends up looking like the ivory tower arguments of privileged people, since many in the world are not exactly swimming in food options in the first place.
Once again, we found ourselves in that realm of, we gotta seize the means or we're going nowhere fast.
veganism as an individualist ideology with moralist arguments largely seems to have spawned as a reaction to factory farming
Veganism has existed for millennia
as an individualist ideology with moralist arguments?
Yes, Buddhism.
From what I can find on it so far, it varies, with some being vegetarian, some being vegan, and some not considering it necessary. In any case, the form of veganism I was trying to talk about is the distinctly modern western form of it, one that doesn't seem to have any noticeable relationship with buddhism.
I will concede I was overly hasty in how I went about talking about veganism with regards to history as a whole.
Incidentally, this does lend weight to Nocturne's point in another comment, where they make a comparison between veganism and religion.
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It is primarily logistical and a matter of survival, which is why it’s so normalized throughout history.
I have not been in many countries where eating meat is logistically easier and/or cheaper than not. Something being historically common does not mean it is primarily about survival. In most places and periods, meat was not available in equal measure to everyone, but that still doesnt explain why some animals are treated as food and some as companions, or why meat often is bound up with status, masculinity, tradition, identity, etc etc. Survival may explain why people eat something, but it does not explain the specific moral and cultural rules around what counts as edible.
It’s for this same reason that the boycott element of veganism so often ends up looking like the ivory tower arguments of privileged people, since many in the world are not exactly swimming in food options in the first place.
That is only true in the case of genuine scarcity, and in those cases I dont think anyone is seriously making a moral demand to starve rather then eat animal products. But in ordinary situations, veganism is not a question of survival but a question of what people choose when survival is not at stake. This is why moral arguments matter here.
These are two very different things and veganism as an individualist ideology with moralist arguments largely seems to have spawned as a reaction to factory farming, not as a reaction to subsistence hunting.
And as far as I can tell, it is largely a failure of an ideology that doesn’t seem to do much more than get a fraction of people to boycott eating meat. Which I don’t think is because it’s using moral arguments, but because it’s isolating individualist ideology as a response to collective industrial production.
Here we are in complete agreement, and in terms of the philosophy of the movement I am not "vegan" although my diet is. Factory farming is the central issue, but I would not dismiss individual ethical refusal on those grounds alone. You can reject a harmful system both politically and personally. Refusing to participate is not a substitute for collective change, but not meaningless either. Would you say the same about the BDS movement against Israel for instance? I'd argue than one can both take the consistent moral position as an individual and isolate yourself from such anti-social practices, and also work on dismantling the systemic abuse. Just like I dont think BDS is a means to an end when it comes to ending the explotation of the Palestinians - I am not gonna reject it for not "focusing on dismantling the obvious system of abuse".
But I would argue it’s largely not a cultural issue, but is instead almost entirely an extension of the need to survive by eating food. Which capital plays into when justifying factory farming.
I disagree. If it were purely survival, then people would not have such strong and inconsistent taboos about which animals are acceptable to eat. Dogs, cats, horses and other animals are treated very differently across cultures despite all of them being edible - once again showing the role of culture. Meat eating is not just "food is food", it is socially organized, morally coded and culturally inherited. The existance of eating is explained by the matter of survival but the boundaries are explained by culture.
if factory farming was ended, along with matching increase in availability of other proteins to compensate, the price would rise and it would somewhat naturally transform into a luxury item.
I guess your argument is that factory farming will end without our social and cultural conditions ending, I disagree completely. The same way I dont think we first will transform into a socialist economy, and only after have shifts in social and cultural praxis. These transitions are heavily intertwined and most of all socially enforced.
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Its almost unbelivable that in a community as deconstructed as this one there are still rectionaries that downvote a comment like yours... being vegan is almost as tiring as being a Marxis-Lenninist.
Everyone in here being a nerd about morals and ethics and efficiency without realizing that it doesn't matter because they'll never be vegan since they were ultimately at one point derived from animals
It's hard to have a productive conversation about things like this when people say things like "I think eating meat is murder". Like what do you even say to someone who has this kind of ridiculous opinion? Personally, eating habits are the same as religious beliefs to me. Do whatever you want, just don't impose your bullshit on me.
It's hard to have a productive conversation about things like this when people say things like "I think wage labor is slavery". Like what do you even say to someone who has this kind of ridiculous opinion? Personally, employment rights and property relations are the same as religious beliefs to me. Do whatever you want, just don't impose your bullshit on me.
i'm not vegan just trying to reframe your comment into a scenario where there's a deeply held powerful belief involved, but it's one you agree with (or should, if you haven't been banned from lemmygrad)
I kind of get what you're trying to do, but it doesn't really work as a comparison. Being dismissive toward class relations as a whole would indeed be a bad thing, but "I think wage labor is slavery" is a contestable statement even in ML terms. Wage labor is not, in fact, slavery. It sucks and capitalism is a highly exploitative power model, but slavery is literal ownership of a person and wage labor is not that. Wage labor may feel as bad as slavery sometimes by people who have never been slaves, but it is still a different form of exploitation.
Though I don't fully mirror the position Nocturne took in my own views, their comparison to religion is somewhat valid. The idea of killing non-human animals counting as murder in the same meaning as killing another human being gets into beliefs that are hard to ground in science, not unlike when a Catholic says that abortion is killing a child. And like abortion, there are real problems with jumping at saying it's a terrible thing to do and then thinking about it from the standpoint of punishing people for doing it - which could sound like a strawman, but there is someone in this thread who was talking about giving non-human animals human rights (which would mean you could be punished similarly for violating their rights).
Calling vegan ethics “like religion” is backwards. Veganism can be argued from moral principles: consistency, avoidance of unnecessary harm and recognition of animal sentience. By contrast, the idea that animals exist for human use has often been justified through explicit religious and cultural hierarchy, especially in Abrahamic traditions: that animals were created for human use and that human dominion over them is natural or divinely ordained. So if anything, the long-standing normalization of meat eating is closer to a theological worldview than the refusal to exploit animals is.
The idea of animals as property is not some neutral baseline of reason, but deeply tied to theology and cultural inheritance.
Also, comparing animal killing to murder is not a claim that animals are literally human, any more than opposing factory farming is the same as claiming abortion and murder are identical. It is a claim about morally relevant harm, not that species are interchangeable.
Also, comparing animal killing to murder is not a claim that animals are literally human
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11773976/8264341
I believe non-human animals are people on the same level as a human and should have the same rights as humans. Eating a deer is cannibalism because it’s consumption of a person’s flesh.
In this very thread. You can speak on what you believe, but you can't tell me all representations of veganism are saying what you say as if I'm making up positions that aren't there - when I was just replying to one earlier.
Edited to add:
Calling vegan ethics “like religion” is backwards.
Someone in this thread pointed out that veganism has had ties to buddhism going back a while. Which is a religion........
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That is a hyperbole (and I guess strawman from you), and should not be met seriously. However, I have met many many more meat eaters who would prioritize saving their dogs or cats over other humans - while I have never met one such vegan. So funnily enough this is a position that arises exactly because of the inconsistent moral argument for eating meat.
I attribute moral value to animals, and I attribute more moral value to humans - but since I attribute moral value to animals I refuse to take apart in a system which exploits their very life-essence for the purpose of surplus sustenance. At the same time, I would in 100% of cases prioritize a human over an animal - unlike meat-eaters who (if consistent) view them as private property and thus are willing to kill for their right of continued ownership.
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First of all, what technology is meant by "Lab-cultured meat"? Because if it's something like taking a few cells from a few dead animals, which could even be extinct animals like mammoths or naturally extinct animals, and multiplying them in lab, without neurons/nerves and such, to feed all of humanity at reasonable efficiency, I just don't see what else is there to say other than "Great! Let's do it quick!"
As an environmentalist, eating meat is probably the most immoral thing I do. I eagerly look forward to the day where we don't have to kill animals to eat meat.
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