Chriki, Ellies-Oury, and Hocquette (2022) on Cultured Meat

Sghaier Chriki, Marie-Pierre Ellies-Oury, and Jean-François Hocquette, “Is ‘Cultured Meat’ a Viable Alternative to Slaughtering Animals and a Good Comprise [sic] Between Animal Welfare and Human Expectations?” Animal Frontiers 12(1): 35-42, February 2022.

• This article presents a fairly negative take on cell-based meat. My view is that it is much too negative, but it is a useful corrective, as much of what you see derives from people who (understandably) adopt an excessively rosy perspective. OK, onto the bullet-point summentary.

•  “’cultured meat’ is not really meat”; and, “the start-ups have succeeded in imposing the name ‘meat’ for these cultivated muscle fibers into the everyday language [p. 36].” imposing?

• The incumbent meat industry is trying to prevent cultivated products from using the word “meat”  -- and the authors seem to think that the incumbents are right, that these "cultivated muscle fibers" don't meet various definitions of meat.  

• Cultured products that use a GMO component (or added hormones) will have trouble being approved in Europe. 

• Cultured meat seems to have less exposure to pathogens, and to antimicrobials, than meat. But who knows, maybe cultured meat will attract its own pathogens.

• Cultured meat might lack some of the characteristics or nutrients of meat, and adding nutrients might not make them equivalent.

• Cultured meat will miss out on the post-mortem aging of muscle tissue that makes meat so tasty.

• Cultured meat will use less water than meat does (though not much less?). But maybe cultivated meat will not be better environmentally, maybe the reduction of methane with (partial?) replacement by CO2 will make matters worse in the long run.

• Something like half of today’s pastureland is unsuitable for anything else(?) And we are informed of the environmental benefits of some forms of animal husbandry. Meat can be made still better for the environment through applications of agroecology.

• Some animals might still be involved in the production of cultivated meat – what about their welfare? Look at fetal bovine serum. 

• We’d lose not just meat but byproducts, such as leather…

• We could reduce food waste!

Kerslake, Kemper, and Conroy (2022) on Meat Substitutes

Eleanor Kerslake, Joya A. Kemper, Denise Conroy, “What’s Your Beef with Meat Substitutes? Exploring Barriers and Facilitators for Meat Substitutes in Omnivores, Vegetarians, and Vegans.” Appetite 170: 105864, 2022.

• Meat substitutes are plant-based foods like Impossible Burgers or Beyond Sausages, which are intended to replicate some of the sensory characteristics of meat; chickpeas and tofu and seitan, by these lights, are not meat substitutes.

• For many people, meat is a search good, while meat substitutes are of recent vintage and are experience goods.

• The authors bring together 6 moderated focus groups, with between 5 to 7 members each. Two of the groups are comprised of omnivores; two of vegetarians; and two of vegans. All told, 35 New Zealanders take part, and together produce 346 pages of transcribed discussions. [But the small numbers in each focus group mean that a "finding" could be based on the comments of just two or three people.]

• Factors that facilitate the take-up of meat alternatives, according to the focus groups, include good packaging and labelling. A photo of the product is helpful, and, for vegans, explicit vegan and environmental certifications. 

• Meat substitutes are often tried out in restaurant or takeaway settings. Later, they might be purchased for home preparation and consumption. The restaurant test provides an endorsement, and perhaps then evidence that, at least with proper preparation, the unfamiliar item is palatable. 

• Barriers to take-up of meat substitutes include high prices: the “vegan tax.”

• The only partial resemblance to meat elicits, in some consumers, feelings of distrust towards meat substitutes.

• Some vegetarians and vegans are unimpressed when companies that produce lots of meat products expand into plant-based options: they view this behavior as “vegan washing.”

• “Tensions” are ambiguous properties of meat substitutes, which can facilitate for some consumers but pose a barrier to others. In this article, tensions far outnumber facilitators and barriers.

• The common view that vegans or vegetarians are judgmental can dissuade some omnivores from wanting to consume meat substitutes.

• The availability of meat substitutes at social events enhances inclusivity.

• Plant-based meats can be too meat-like for vegans, but too unlike meat for omnivores.

• Meat substitutes are sometimes seen as healthy, and sometimes as unhealthy.

Kurki (2021) on Legal Personhood for Animals

 Visa Kurki, “Legal Personhood and Animal Rights.” Journal of Animal Ethics 11(1): 47-62, Spring 2021.

• The Nonhuman Rights Project (along with others) seeks to have animals in the US “given” legal rights; this approach has not yet succeeded in the US. (There has been a significant victory in Argentina, however.)

• The goal of having a court declare animals to be legal persons via writs for habeas corpus means that such cases hold high stakes for the judges involved.

• The high judicial stakes might pose a problem for improving the conditions under which animals live. Judges are generally not all that willing to go well beyond existing precedents, especially if the departure could imply sweeping changes, such as forbidding the keeping of companion animals like dogs and cats. A better framing for those seeking to improve the conditions under which animals are confined might be: animals already possess rights, and the question is whether in some cases those rights should encompass habeas corpus.

• Kurki pushes back against the view that a focus on improved animal welfare is in opposition to the provision of rights to animals, in part because of ambiguities in the use of the term "rights.". [Our blog has done something similar.] 

• Kurki also pushes back against the notion that only legal persons possess rights. Though not currently considered to be legal persons, animals already possess some “incidents” of the bundle of rights that typically come with personhood (pages 52-53). That is, Kurki supports (both here and in his open access 2019 book) a "bundle" theory of legal personhood, in which there are many potential sticks of rights, but that in any specific instance, only a subset of those sticks might be provided. Anti-cruelty laws indicate that animals already possess some sticks in the rights bundle.

• The notion that a being can only possess legal rights if that being is capable of bearing legal duties is misguided, as the case of human infants indicates, but a version of that reasoning has been adopted by a court in arguing against legal personhood for the chimpanzee Tommy (page 54).

• Animals can be granted habeas corpus rights without there being some uncontrolled revolution that would force people to stop having pets, for instance. Kurki endorses making this case to courts, instead of asking them to undo millennia of perceived precedents with far-reaching consequences: "What if the stakes in the habeas corpus trials are not whether animals should be included in the community of legal right-holders, but rather whether certain animals should receive the right to personal freedom, protected by habeas corpus [page 55]?"

• Kurki's approach is paralleled by the well-known concurring opinion (pdf here) by Judge Fahey in the Tommy (the chimpanzee) case. 

Liebman (2022) on US Animal Law

Matthew Liebman, “Key Animal Law in the United States.” Chapter 33, pages 436-448, in Routledge Handbook of Animal Welfare, Andrew Knight, Clive Phillips, and Paula Sparks, editors, Routledge, 2022. 

• Early legal protections for animals were aimed at securing human property and preventing a brutalization of human society.

• Most US laws on animal protection are state (via the “police power”) and local. The federal laws rely (for Constitutional imprimatur) upon the Commerce Clause, so transport and slaughter are the main areas addressed.

• Animals in US law are property (or, for wild animals, potential property), essentially “things”; but…

• …if someone intentionally kills your pet dog, do they only need to compensate you for the dog’s “market value”?

• But "every state has an anticruelty law, which limits how owners can treat their animals, at least in some limited contexts. This protection sets animals apart as a unique form of property: no other form of property receives legal protections based on its own interests [p. 438]."

• The federal Animal Welfare Act (1966): sets minimum care standards for some research animals, pets, and bred animals; dogs and primates get some special protection.

• The federal “28 Hour Law” (1873): animals in transport must have a food-water-exercise break every 28 hours; chickens and turkeys are not covered by this law.

• Humane Slaughter Act (1958, 1973): requires animals to be stunned before slaughter; chickens, the most commonly slaughtered land animal, are not covered.

• The federal Endangered Species Act (1973): offers protections to animal and plant species ruled to be threatened or endangered.

• Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act (2019): makes some types of animal abuse federal felonies.

• Custody disputes and companion animals: the interests of the animals might receive attention from the court.

• Anti-cruelty laws are based on the notion that some animals are sentient. Nonetheless, there might be legal consequences from explicit declarations of animal sentience in the law. The legislature of the state of Oregon has made such a declaration. This declaration, however, was insufficient to give a horse named Justice the opportunity to sue his human abuser for damages -- the lead attorney for Justice was Matthew Liebman, the author of the article we are outlining here.

• The Nonhuman Rights Project has tried to bring habeas corpus actions in the name of their clients, captive elephants and chimpanzees. So far these legal actions have not been successful, though some individual judges have been sympathetic.

• Animal cruelty laws generally must address several dimensions: What animals are covered? (Insects?; wild animals?; fish?); What conduct is proscribed? (Acts of omission?); What conduct is permitted? (Standard factory farm cruelties are typically exempt); and, What sanctions are applied? (Ban offenders from owning animals?) 

• Some states and localities in the  US ban animals (or some subset of animals) in circuses; some states ban testing of cosmetics on animals; and, some states ban stores that sell pets.

• “…animal laws in the United States still assume that animals are exploitable resources that humans are allowed to use [p. 447].”

Rowan, D'Silva, Duncan, and Palmer (2021) on Animal Sentience

Andrew N. Rowan, Joyce M. D'Silva, Ian J. H. Duncan, and Nicholas Palmer, “Animal Sentience: History, Science, and Politics.” Animal Sentience 31(1), 2021

• “…the lot of animals has worsened considerably since Bentham penned his famous phrase.”

• Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness (2012, pdf): humans are not special when it comes to consciousness! Birds, for instance, demonstrate consciousness.

• The best evidence is that all mammals, all birds, and many other species (like octopuses) possess the neural/physical capacity for consciousness, and they also demonstrate intentional behavior.

• Milestones include Ruth Harrison and her book, Animal Machines (1964); the Brambell Report (1965, pdf) (a report on farmed animal welfare prepared for the British government); and the formation of the British advocacy group Compassion in World Farming (1967).

• In assessing animal welfare, one of the difficulties involves measuring feelings and their intensity -- though clearly subjective feelings are central to wellbeing.

• One way to discern animal welfare is to offer animals two (or more) options, and see which one they choose -- a revealed preference approach. The next step is to gauge the strength of the preference, perhaps by altering the "price" (in effort, say) that animals are willing to pay to take their preferred option. 

• The “Five Freedoms” are well-known and widely adopted guidelines for animal welfare, growing out of the Brambell Report, where the focus was on livestock. 

• "Of all the stimuli or states of suffering in animal agriculture, pain is probably responsible for a bigger reduction in welfare than any other... [p. 6]." Bad flooring generates a lot of pain in farm animals.

• Other sources of pain include difficult social interactions in crowded settings, surgeries conducted without anesthesia, and fast-growth-related problems. Boredom also can harm animal welfare.

• Traditionally, examinations of animal welfare have focused on suffering, but pleasure also is important. 

• Animal sentience is now explicitly recognized in legal documents in many parts of the world, including in the EU, Colombia, and the post-Brexit UK.

• The Animal Protection Index (available at https://api.worldanimalprotection.org/) encapsulates country-level information on the legislative protections for animals.