Abstract
This chapter explores the fascination with a chicken-less chicken future, as portended by these current in vitro efforts, through the lens of speculative fact and fiction. The narrative starts with an era of expansionist dreams of limitless chicken flesh found in the early and mid-nineteenth century. It then switches to a stronger focus on design, where we can exercise our intentions more precisely on protein machines and their outputs. These fictional accounts and factual promotions each explore different ways in which the problems of meat have been “solved,” and echo much of the discussion surrounding the development and promotion of in vitro meat technology, while informing a society that would support it.
Works of art cannot save us. They can simply render us more sensitive to what needs to be repaired.
—Terry Eagleton, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010
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Notes
- 1.
To be fair, these elements of disruption were not planned. They were exactly the kinds of unanticipated realities that I had to accommodate, that made me realize that I had certain unacknowledged expectations.
- 2.
Galusky, Wyatt. 2010. “Playing Chicken: Technologies of Domestication, Food, and Self.” Science as Culture 19 (1): 15–35. As I detail here, I found that chicken raising was much more technically and philosophically complex than I realized, and my failures kept requiring me to reconfigure and reassess my goals.
- 3.
See, for example, Latour, Bruno. 2002. “Morality and Technology: The End of the Means.” Theory, Culture, & Society 19 (5/6): 247–60, and Verbeek, Peter Paul. 2005. What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.
- 4.
Belasco, Meals to Come, 264.
- 5.
Carrel, “ON THE PERMANENT LIFE OF TISSUES…”, 528.
- 6.
Carrel, “ON THE PERMANENT LIFE OF TISSUES…”, 516.
- 7.
A similar kind of thinking occurs in food systems—the logic of preventable occurrences gets applied to predation and bodily limitations on growth, which can be overcome through confinement and through reconfigurations of the body and its importance to the process. What humans want from the body (or the cell) become the most important consideration.
- 8.
Carrel, “ON THE PERMANENT LIFE OF TISSUES…”, 528. According to Landecker, important to the cultural resonance of Carrel’s experiment and reporting related to the tendency of the heart tissue to pulse, thus manifesting its aliveness. Landecker, Culturing Life.
- 9.
See Radiolab. 2007. Life’s Limit. https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/91563-lifes-limit/.
- 10.
Jiang, Lijing. 2012. “Alexis Carrel’s Immortal Chick Heart Tissue Cultures (1912–1946) | The Embryo Project Encyclopedia.” The Embryo Project Encyclopedia. July 3, 2012. https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/alexis-carrels-immortal-chick-heart-tissue-cultures-1912-1946.
- 11.
Witkowski, J A. 1980. “Dr. Carrel’s Immortal Cells.” Medical History 24 (2): 129–42.—he favors the latter theory.
- 12.
See, for example, Landecker, Culturing Life, 92: “the sense of control over biological matter was very appealing, and it was a period in which human control over biology seemed feasible and desirable. Tissue culture was used both as evidence of the human power to manipulate biology and as a demonstration of the dangers of unfettered reproduction. That is, it seemed to simultaneously represent biologists’ ability to manipulate life and the potential anarchical powers of proliferation hidden in biological matter, which necessitated control. Scientists were more likely to see the death of their tissue cultures as failures of technique rather than challenges to the idea of life’s indefinite bounds.”
- 13.
Notice the conception of what is absurd—growing parts of the animal that we do not want in order to get those that we do. Such practices are inefficient and undesirable (similar to what Edelman, et al., “In Vitro Cultured Meat Production,” tout with in vitro) and potentially unnecessary—a mark of human progress (escaping the absurd) by getting what we want and avoiding what we do not.
- 14.
Price, Jennifer. 2000. Flight Maps: Adventures With Nature In Modern America. New edition. New York: Basic Books.
- 15.
He is especially worried about Communists.
- 16.
This and subsequent quotes come from Oboler, Arch. n.d. Lights Out (Old Time Radio). http://archive.org/details/LightsOutoldTimeRadio. They represent transcriptions of the audio file composed by me.
- 17.
Pohl, Frederik, and C.M. Kornbluth. 1969. The Space Merchants. New York: Walker, p. 76.
- 18.
One might argue, at the risk of straining the metaphorical comparison past its breaking point, that the consies represent a kind of cancer on the society so envisioned, though in the logic of the novel, this would not be an apt comparison. The consies are seen as a positive force for change.
- 19.
Landecker, Culturing Life.
- 20.
Landecker, Culturing Life, 223–24.
- 21.
See, for example, Kalof, Linda. 2007. Looking at Animals in History. London: Reaktion Books.
- 22.
“New Harvest.” n.d. New Harvest. Accessed June 8, 2018. https://www.new-harvest.org/.
- 23.
“MOSAMEAT.” n.d. Accessed June 8, 2018. https://mosameat.eu/index.html.
- 24.
“Upside Foods.” Accessed December 2, 2021. https://upsidefoods.com/. The original company, Memphis Meats, put it even more directly, striving “to bring delicious and healthy meat to your table by harvesting it from cells instead of animals. You can enjoy the meat you love today and feel good about how it’s made because we strive to make it better for you…and for the world.” See “Memphis Meats.” n.d. Memphis Meats. Accessed June 8, 2018. http://www.memphismeats.com/.
- 25.
“Tyson Ventures.” n.d. Accessed June 8, 2018. https://www.tysonfoods.com/innovation/food-innovation/tyson-ventures.
- 26.
“Beyond Meat – The Future of ProteinTM.” n.d. Accessed June 8, 2018. http://beyondmeat.com/.
- 27.
“Cultured Meat || Future Meat Technologies.” n.d. Cultured Meat | Jerusalem | Future Meat Technologies. Accessed June 8, 2018. https://www.future-meat.com.
- 28.
Ford, Matt. 2009. “In-Vitro Meat: Would Lab-Burgers Be Better for Us and the Planet?” 2009.
- 29.
Zaraska, Marta. 2013. “Is Lab-Grown Meat Good for Us?” The Atlantic. August 19, 2013. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/08/is-lab-grown-meat-good-for-us/278778/.
- 30.
Zaraska, Marta. 2016. “Lab-Grown Meat Is in Your Future, and It May Be Healthier than the Real Stuff.” Washington Post, May 2, 2016, sec. Health & Science. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/lab-grown-meat-is-in-your-future-and-it-may-be-healthier-than-the-real-stuff/2016/05/02/aa893f34-e630-11e5-a6f3-21ccdbc5f74e_story.html.
- 31.
Gholipour, Bahar. 2017. “Lab-Grown Meat May Save a Lot More than Farm Animals’ Lives.” NBC News. April 6, 2017. https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/innovation/lab-grown-meat-may-save-lot-more-farm-animals-lives-n743091.
- 32.
Javelosa, June. 2017. “Lab-Grown Meat Is Healthier. It’s Cheaper. It’s the Future.” Futurism (blog). February 21, 2017. https://futurism.com/were-5-years-away-from-lab-grown-meat-hitting-store-shelves/.
- 33.
Production systems would be reallocated.
- 34.
Mattick, Carolyn, Amy Landis, and Brad Allenby. 2015. “The Problem With Making Meat in a Factory.” Slate, September 28, 2015. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/09/in_vitro_meat_probably_won_t_save_the_planet_yet.html.
- 35.
Cannavò, Peter. 2010. “Listening to the ‘Yuck Factor’: Why In-Vitro Meat May Be Too Much to Digest.” In. Washington, D.C.
- 36.
Mattick, et al., “The Problem With Making Meat in a Factory,” emphasis in original.
- 37.
Atwood, Margaret. 2014. MaddAddam. Reprint edition. New York: Anchor, p. 393.
- 38.
Atwood, Margaret. “Winton Tolles Lecture.” Hamilton College, March 4, 2010.
- 39.
Atwood, Margaret. 2003. Oryx and Crake: A Novel. New York: Doubleday, pp. 202–3.
- 40.
Other novel biobeings fare much better in their new environments upon release, like the wolvogs and pigoons which become a new kind of predatory terror in this fallen world.
- 41.
Atwood, Oryx and Crake, 61.
- 42.
Atwood, Oryx and Crake, 233.
- 43.
Parry, Jovian. 2009. “Oryx and Crake and the New Nostalgia for Meat.” Society and Animals 17: 241–56.
- 44.
Steinberg, Ted. 2006. Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America. 2nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. See, also, Virilio’s description of the shift from local to global problems, in Loeb, Zachary. “Inventing the Shipwreck.” Real Life. January 3, 2022. https://reallifemag.com/inventing-the-shipwreck/.
- 45.
As Jeff Goldblum’s character famously put it in Jurassic Park, “Life, uh… finds a way.” Spielberg, Stephen. n.d. Jurassic Park (1993) – IMDb. Accessed January 15, 2020. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107290/characters/nm0000156.
- 46.
Wilson, Daniel H. 2007. Where’s My Jetpack?: A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future That Never Arrived. 1 edition. New York: Bloomsbury USA.
- 47.
Parry, “Oryx and Crake and the New Nostalgia for Meat.” See also Stephenson, The Diamond Age.
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Galusky, W. (2022). A Future, Part I. In: Protein Machines, Technology, and the Nature of the Future. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08717-2_5
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