麻豆传媒

PICTURE this: it鈥檚 10 years from now and you are deciding what to get for lunch. You鈥檙e stuck or a dodo chorizo burrito. It is a delicious problem to have 鈥� or maybe a creepy one. Or both.

It can be stunning to take a step back sometimes and realise that we are living in the future. Technologies that seemed fantastical in movies last century are fast becoming part of our regular lives. The food tech sector is no exception, with start-ups making cell-cultivated meat 鈥� real meat grown from animal cells rather than slaughtered animals 鈥� some of it sourced from stranger origins than you might think.

Start-up has yet to release its creations to the public, but it plans to specialise in 鈥渆xotic鈥� cell-cultivated meats that most people would otherwise never have the chance to try, like tiger and zebra. Earlier this year, cultured-meat company Vow created a meatball using DNA imitating that of a . It is on display in a Dutch museum, not making its way into anyone鈥檚 melty Italian subs (yet), but it was an attention-grabbing moment for the nascent cultivated meat industry and was in the press worldwide.

In July, The Atlantic published a on the state of cell-cultivated meat as a consumer product. The article was titled 鈥淥pen your mind to unicorn meat鈥�, pointing to the sorts of that some are interested in creating, which would combine the most delicious qualities of different animals.

As an advocate of cellular agriculture, the framing of cell-cultivated meat as a science experiment concerns me. Sure, the idea of mammoth meatballs and a steak with, as The Atlantic put it, 鈥渢he density of flavor of an Oreo鈥� are interesting to think about from a scientific perspective, but will those descriptions make the average person鈥檚 mouth water? I think not.

To the industry鈥檚 credit, there are more grounded projects in the works too, like the cell-cultivated chicken breast from Upside Foods, which recently all regulatory hurdles in the US and is now at Bar Crenn in San Francisco. But when the industry presents itself to the public through attention-grabbing headlines about mammoth meat, it isn鈥檛 doing itself any favours.

Perception is a major concern when trying to introduce the public to . A last year found that cell-cultivated meat is 鈥渧iewed negatively on all attributes except animal friendliness鈥�, including its perceived safety, healthiness and enjoyability. The result? Only one-quarter of consumers indicated a willingness to eat cell-cultivated chicken and beef. We really need to sell people on cell-cultivated meat, because behind all the culinary imagination, there lies a pressing issue: the need to end industrial animal agriculture.

Every year in the US alone, land animals are slaughtered within the factory farm system. Industrial animal agriculture is responsible not only for acts of , but for environmental that affects entire and for major public health threats like (those that jump from animal to human hosts). Ending our reliance on industrial animal agriculture to feed the world can鈥檛 be a far-off goal.

So, I am all for innovation, but these far-flung ideas shouldn鈥檛 be the face of the cell-cultivated meat movement, at least not until the cell-cultivated versions of staple foods like chicken, pork and beef have been perfected and, more importantly, normalised. Plus, they need to be climate-friendly.

If the goal is to provide an animal-friendly, eco-friendly, safer alternative that consumers are happy to replace their meat with, we probably shouldn鈥檛 be encouraging a mental association between cell-cultivated meat and, well, science experiments.

Brian Kateman is a writer聽and founder of the Reducetarian Foundation, working to reduce the use of animal products