In the 1970s film Soylent Green it’s people themselves who are turned into food to keep a future population from starvation. Now we’re having artificial meat promoted as a way to feed the ever-expanding global population by 2050, and that’s not a movie script—it’s a serious proposal by the UK government’s chief scientist, John Beddington.
Advocating artificial meat production doesn’t address the real issues. The human population cannot keep growing on a world that is finite. Vegetarianism and veganism are far more practical responses to the emissions and food crises of today and tomorrow, although even predominantly herbivorous diets can only go so far before population control—the ultimate taboo topic outside China—becomes necessary.
Either we as a species introduce measures to curb our reproductive excess, or nature will find a way through the use of disease and other disasters. Note, for starters, the recent evolution in India of the promiscuous gene that can hop from bacteria to bacteria, bringing with it full antibiotic resistance and spreading around the world with unprecedented speed thanks to us. We don’t have to worry about new killer bugs. The ones we thought were conquered weren’t, they were only held back for a time.
Beddington’s prediction, proposal, whatever you want to call it, is a response not only to a growing population but the impacts of climate change as well. What this scientist is selling is the idea that genetic engineering can save the world. Companies like Monsanto rub their hands in glee at the prospect of absolute necessity overcoming our hostility (those of us outside the US) to GM foodstuffs, although there is nothing absolute or necessary—nor particularly new—about using fear as a tool to get people to do what you want. Fear has been used by those on the left as well as the right, people of faith and people of no faith at all.
Environmentalists have switched in recent years, rightly working hard to promote the positives of change—it’s not about sackcloth and ashes but better lives for everyone—but we are derided whenever we raise the issue of population control. It seems some argue we have the right to keep breeding no matter what may come, while the spectre of eugenics casts a shadow as well. But why don’t we just stop producing as much meat as we do, turn land over to growing crops instead, and sensibly reach agreement to impose a cap of two children per family, the world over? Because, of course, we cannot reach global consensus. Instead, we will attempt to crisis manage rather than prevent crises happening in the first place. And that won’t work.
Technology is the answer, we are told, to the pressing issues some aspects of our technological ingenuity have created. It is true that technology can help but it is not, and never can be, a cure-all. Beddington advocates a whole new type of factory farming when factory farming is already the cause of a host of major problems, while failing to tell us how these meat-vats will be kept free of disease when, by long before 2050, the antibiotics era will definitely be behind us.
In a not-so-future world where even having a once minor operation to remove an appendix could result in untreatable and fatal infections, it is impossible to see how sterile biological environments could be maintained on a global commercial scale in laboratories any more than hospitals. Even today, most people choose not to hold memory of the fact that the cheap chicken they buy from supermarkets spent most of its short accelerated life belly-deep in excrement. When routine overuse of antibiotics and disinfectants are no longer by any measure effective, this method of producing meat will become unsustainable. How vat-produced artificial meat can then be developed is a mystery.
And then there are the ethical considerations, the morality of it all, to consider. It is true, as Bertolt Brecht wrote, that “food is the first thing, morals go on” but, by the time we get to the point where people would readily accept anything as a result of starvation, the chances are high that society would have broken down into chaos. And would certain people of faith be willing and able to eat artificial meat? Jews, for example, or Hindus?
Long before bucket meat becomes viable and distributable, if ever, we’ll have food riots, social breakdown and the devastating impacts of floods and droughts to contend with the world over. Laws will have become ever more oppressive and restrictive, while punishments for transgression will be brutal and quickly imposed.
What I’m saying is, scientific advancements are only really possible in civilised societies or underground bunkers. If we set aside our morals and ethics, and give carte blanche to scientists to do anything they can to put food in mouths, we are arguably less civilised as a consequence, in much the same way as many of us believe the acceptance or toleration of factory farming diminishes and shames us all. Certainly, our ability to hold together a working civilisation will be tested by the impacts of climate change and other man-made problems long before bucket meat can be put on any dinner table.
It seems to this writer that our chief scientific adviser to the government would better serve this nation, and the world, by promoting things we can all do today—not advocating things only scientists might be able to do tomorrow. If you’re not happy with the idea of getting hand-outs of factory-produced flesh in the future, start growing at least some of your own food and begin the journey away from consumerism towards greater self-sufficiency.
Ever-increasing dependency or the first steps towards greater self-reliance. It’s up to you which you choose.
