Lab meat can solve this! Just like solar and self-driving and zoning reform, lab meat is a technology that has the potential to create material and moral abundance. Right now opposing lab meat is more popular than allowing it. It remains low salience because it’s unsettling and expensive but like many other abundance projects, I suspect it’s just a matter of sustained effort to change both.
I think we are likely to achieve clinical immortality before we achieve economically viable lab meat. It is incredibly, incredibly expensive to keep meat alive without an animal. Costs of cell culture are falling extremely slowly.
I am one of those Americans who heard about the "Save Our Bacon" provision and tried to share information to stop it. I eat meat but I try to balance my consumption by eating more veggies, grains, and fruits (I try to keep my meat consumption somewhere between 15% and 20% of my weekly food intake) and I try (and do not always succeed) to eat mean that is sourced from ethical producers.
I appreciate your quandary here and I enjoyed the discussion of the moral implications of eating meat while not taking a fanatical position on either side of the issue, but I think that you missed/overstated one important thing. The cost of pork would not go up substantially if the California or Massachusetts standards were implicated nationwide and would be less than the cost increases that we have seen due to the spike in fuel since our folly in the Persian Gulf began. The hidden story is the money made by giant agribusiness at the expense of animal and consumer welfare (https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/small-farmers-form-coalition-to-push-back-against-2026-farm-bill/).
Because of that, the moral stakes in opposing this act aren't as stark as they seem when you pose the question, "...would you give up meat as you know it," and that really isn't a fair question to ask.
Thanks for a great read and let's try to keep this horrible Farm Bill in our sights when Congress comes back from Summer Recess.
This is silly. My freezer is full of pork (and beef) from animals that were raised (and slaughtered) humanely. As the farmers say (and to which I can attest), they had one bad day. It really isn’t even that much more expensive in the grand scheme of things. It’s true people might have to eat a bit less beef and pork if were all raised this way, (and a LOT less processed meat products) but with a judicious reorientation of farm subsidy policy and a dramatic reform in the way we use farmland, no one need be “worse off.”
Why can't we put it to a market vote and pass laws that simply require meat packaging to describe what the life of the animal whose meat is in the package was like?
I'm not talking about a Portlandia farce where we need to make sure that the animals were massaged and read bedtime stories, but just to know that they were treated with decency and had a standard of living that did not put them under any duress and that when they were slaughtered they were slaughtered in a way that was instant and not traumatic.
There are many farms that already advertise that this is precisely how they treat their wildlife and many of us go out of our way to procure our meat from precisely such farms. But for whatever reason, their product has yet to reach most supermarkets where the labeling makes it explicit why the prices are substantially higher.
The cost to making this information available is negligible and then we'll let people vote with their wallet. I'm probably not that rare a consumer who cares about animal welfare and is prepared to pay a meaningful premium on meat that is sourced from animals that lived a happy life and a cruelty free death.
Are there such proposals in any states? If so, how are they doing?
The labeling that "means very little" is largely irrelevant. We already have all sorts of oversight for what can or can't be labeled as "organic" (for example) and that seems to be reasonably accurate.
I'm sure it's not perfect but in what I'm describing it's very hard to cheat - either a farm meets various criteria or it doesn't. Once a farm or ranch is the kind where animals just wander around and there's a way to slaughter them out view of other animals and in some efficient and painless manner (which presumably would require some kind of audit and certification) there's very little incentive for them to "cheat" and indeed such cheating would probably create more problems for them, in terms of their standard operating procedure, than it fixes.
Most of the resistance to these changes come from the massive cost in modifying an operation to begin with. The farms that are operating this way now (which I was referring to) have every incentive to not be exposed as doing anything nefarious - their reputations are their lifeblood and their customers are buying from them precisely because they claim to practice this kind of farming and butchery.
Anyway - I guess my pushback to your pushback is... as opposed to what? This article states (I believe quite accurately) that if we wait for the voting public to vote themselves into even less affordable meat we'll wait for ever and the animals will continue to suffer and the very slow advance of the kinds of farms I'm talking about (which are indeed slowly proliferating in places where there's a market for it) will take every longer to catch on.
My suggestion (I believe) would just make this product immediately more available to those who can afford it and then if it catches on then its popularity will necessarily bring the prices down for everyone - and perhaps after that happens we could even think of some kind of subsidies for everyone who practices this kind of farming to incentivize the entire industry (akin to how we give people tax breaks to buy electric vehicles and put up solar panels). But none of that is going to catch on until there's a groundswell of enthusiasm from the consumer base so I'm just thinking of the lowest hanging fruit to get us there.
Thank you for this piece. It does little good to note how plant-based bacon approximates the real thing when cooked just right. But this is definitely a minority position -- humane treatment of animals harvested for meat -- worth lifting higher into view. Would that we could end is consumption for good.
I think federalism is a pretty solid solution to this problem. If you're a zealous minority, moving to a state you agree with is a lot, but better than having to leave the country. Although it becomes difficult when you're both a pro-life minority, and a animal welfare minority. Two cheers for capitalism where stricter animal welfare laws in a few states means that producers in other states follow them to increase thier market. I've heard of this working in other areas too, so I have a lot of skepticism about the federal government preempting state laws.
"Still, asking people to improve pigs’ lives is one thing; asking them to pay a lot more for bacon, let alone give it up entirely, is another. Ending farm animal suffering would require the latter."
Kind of a strange way to shoot your own political position in the foot! I suppose the only way no farm animal can suffer is to have zero farm animals. But farm animal suffering can be greatly reduced without large costs, as the states you just listed in this article proved. In general, the cost of complying with well-structured regulations start out way smaller than the affected businesses claim and continue to fall over time. Please don't endorse Ag's false dilemma on gestation crates.
I'm so glad you care about the lives of animals. I started realizing the horror going on when I read "The Omnivore's Dilemma," by Michael Pollen. That feeling grew after reading "Become Vegan," by Brenda Davis. Then there's "Eating Animals," by Jonathan Foer. It really is hard to fathom why dogs and cats get our love and support, but other animals don't. And not only do we help the animals by protecting them and encouraging less slaughter, we help the environment and we live longer on a plant-based diet with the proper supplements, such as B12, zinc and Omega 3s. It's a triple win!
Lab meat can solve this! Just like solar and self-driving and zoning reform, lab meat is a technology that has the potential to create material and moral abundance. Right now opposing lab meat is more popular than allowing it. It remains low salience because it’s unsettling and expensive but like many other abundance projects, I suspect it’s just a matter of sustained effort to change both.
I don't think you have to go that far. Impossible meat is pretty much equivalent to mediocre burger, which is a staggering technological achievement.
I'm just sad that apparently the market segment doesn't really exist for it. I'm doing my part, but I'm just one person.
I think we are likely to achieve clinical immortality before we achieve economically viable lab meat. It is incredibly, incredibly expensive to keep meat alive without an animal. Costs of cell culture are falling extremely slowly.
I would also recommend Robert Jackson Bennett’s Divine Cities trilogy which is about the aftermath of colonization in some really interesting ways
Regarding animal welfare, an emphasis on the environmental impact should always be included. Eating meat way more impactful than data centers.
I am one of those Americans who heard about the "Save Our Bacon" provision and tried to share information to stop it. I eat meat but I try to balance my consumption by eating more veggies, grains, and fruits (I try to keep my meat consumption somewhere between 15% and 20% of my weekly food intake) and I try (and do not always succeed) to eat mean that is sourced from ethical producers.
I appreciate your quandary here and I enjoyed the discussion of the moral implications of eating meat while not taking a fanatical position on either side of the issue, but I think that you missed/overstated one important thing. The cost of pork would not go up substantially if the California or Massachusetts standards were implicated nationwide and would be less than the cost increases that we have seen due to the spike in fuel since our folly in the Persian Gulf began. The hidden story is the money made by giant agribusiness at the expense of animal and consumer welfare (https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/small-farmers-form-coalition-to-push-back-against-2026-farm-bill/).
Because of that, the moral stakes in opposing this act aren't as stark as they seem when you pose the question, "...would you give up meat as you know it," and that really isn't a fair question to ask.
Thanks for a great read and let's try to keep this horrible Farm Bill in our sights when Congress comes back from Summer Recess.
(More reading from small farmers and ethical producers can be found here: https://www.ciwf.com/public-policy/defeat-the-save-our-bacon-act/)
This is silly. My freezer is full of pork (and beef) from animals that were raised (and slaughtered) humanely. As the farmers say (and to which I can attest), they had one bad day. It really isn’t even that much more expensive in the grand scheme of things. It’s true people might have to eat a bit less beef and pork if were all raised this way, (and a LOT less processed meat products) but with a judicious reorientation of farm subsidy policy and a dramatic reform in the way we use farmland, no one need be “worse off.”
Why can't we put it to a market vote and pass laws that simply require meat packaging to describe what the life of the animal whose meat is in the package was like?
I'm not talking about a Portlandia farce where we need to make sure that the animals were massaged and read bedtime stories, but just to know that they were treated with decency and had a standard of living that did not put them under any duress and that when they were slaughtered they were slaughtered in a way that was instant and not traumatic.
There are many farms that already advertise that this is precisely how they treat their wildlife and many of us go out of our way to procure our meat from precisely such farms. But for whatever reason, their product has yet to reach most supermarkets where the labeling makes it explicit why the prices are substantially higher.
The cost to making this information available is negligible and then we'll let people vote with their wallet. I'm probably not that rare a consumer who cares about animal welfare and is prepared to pay a meaningful premium on meat that is sourced from animals that lived a happy life and a cruelty free death.
Are there such proposals in any states? If so, how are they doing?
How do we hold producers to the accuracy of such statements though? There is already a lot of labeling that from what I've heard means very little
The labeling that "means very little" is largely irrelevant. We already have all sorts of oversight for what can or can't be labeled as "organic" (for example) and that seems to be reasonably accurate.
I'm sure it's not perfect but in what I'm describing it's very hard to cheat - either a farm meets various criteria or it doesn't. Once a farm or ranch is the kind where animals just wander around and there's a way to slaughter them out view of other animals and in some efficient and painless manner (which presumably would require some kind of audit and certification) there's very little incentive for them to "cheat" and indeed such cheating would probably create more problems for them, in terms of their standard operating procedure, than it fixes.
Most of the resistance to these changes come from the massive cost in modifying an operation to begin with. The farms that are operating this way now (which I was referring to) have every incentive to not be exposed as doing anything nefarious - their reputations are their lifeblood and their customers are buying from them precisely because they claim to practice this kind of farming and butchery.
Anyway - I guess my pushback to your pushback is... as opposed to what? This article states (I believe quite accurately) that if we wait for the voting public to vote themselves into even less affordable meat we'll wait for ever and the animals will continue to suffer and the very slow advance of the kinds of farms I'm talking about (which are indeed slowly proliferating in places where there's a market for it) will take every longer to catch on.
My suggestion (I believe) would just make this product immediately more available to those who can afford it and then if it catches on then its popularity will necessarily bring the prices down for everyone - and perhaps after that happens we could even think of some kind of subsidies for everyone who practices this kind of farming to incentivize the entire industry (akin to how we give people tax breaks to buy electric vehicles and put up solar panels). But none of that is going to catch on until there's a groundswell of enthusiasm from the consumer base so I'm just thinking of the lowest hanging fruit to get us there.
Thank you for this piece. It does little good to note how plant-based bacon approximates the real thing when cooked just right. But this is definitely a minority position -- humane treatment of animals harvested for meat -- worth lifting higher into view. Would that we could end is consumption for good.
I think federalism is a pretty solid solution to this problem. If you're a zealous minority, moving to a state you agree with is a lot, but better than having to leave the country. Although it becomes difficult when you're both a pro-life minority, and a animal welfare minority. Two cheers for capitalism where stricter animal welfare laws in a few states means that producers in other states follow them to increase thier market. I've heard of this working in other areas too, so I have a lot of skepticism about the federal government preempting state laws.
"Still, asking people to improve pigs’ lives is one thing; asking them to pay a lot more for bacon, let alone give it up entirely, is another. Ending farm animal suffering would require the latter."
Kind of a strange way to shoot your own political position in the foot! I suppose the only way no farm animal can suffer is to have zero farm animals. But farm animal suffering can be greatly reduced without large costs, as the states you just listed in this article proved. In general, the cost of complying with well-structured regulations start out way smaller than the affected businesses claim and continue to fall over time. Please don't endorse Ag's false dilemma on gestation crates.
I'm so glad you care about the lives of animals. I started realizing the horror going on when I read "The Omnivore's Dilemma," by Michael Pollen. That feeling grew after reading "Become Vegan," by Brenda Davis. Then there's "Eating Animals," by Jonathan Foer. It really is hard to fathom why dogs and cats get our love and support, but other animals don't. And not only do we help the animals by protecting them and encouraging less slaughter, we help the environment and we live longer on a plant-based diet with the proper supplements, such as B12, zinc and Omega 3s. It's a triple win!