For my personal pursuit I tried to combine my various interests (biology, new technologies and ethics) into a single personal pursuit project. In my project I attempted to investigate the development of the practice of in vitro meat cultivation, it’s technical requirements and possible applications and the social dimension of such a disruptive and potentially controversial technology and business.
I was always very much interested in animals and the process of creating food and considered this process a fascinating social (and even spiritual) phenomenon. I have realized that the consumption and production of our food products plays a major role in our daily lives and makes up part of our identity. Some time ago I also realized that the modern meat-production and consumption has major negative impacts on the world's environment(s).
My search into in vitro meat started with the realisation of the existence of this social and environmental issue and my interest in technological solutions for these types of problems.
Based on my academic interest I planned a structured research framework to meet my goal: “to investigate the real potential of in vitro meat and whether it can actually make a change towards a more sustainable society”. I looked into the different stakeholders in this sector, mainly focusing on the stakeholders involved with the innovations of in vitro meat.
I had to opportunity to interview a number of people who are involved with in vitro technology, from these interviews I learned what the industry is about, what the technological possibilities could be and what the goals are of these players in their respective roles as stakeholders.
From my research I found that the major limitation of this technology and concept are not the technology and technological possibilities themselves but rather the main limitation is in the acceptance of the general public or consumers of meat to this new “meat” product.
Besides literature research and expert interviews I also held some workshops in which I presented the findings of my investigation and could get the attendees to participate in a discussion on the subjects of the problems I looked at in my investigation.
This is the link to the blog where I wrote the articles of my research: https://artificialmeatsite.wordpress.com/
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