In the paper entitled The Ethics of Producing In Vitro Meat, a possible issue with In Vitro Meat(in the article referred to as IVM and for the rest of this post will also be referred to as IVM) is discussed, this issue being that “in vitro meat is disrespectful, either to nature or to animals.”

The article addresses the concern that argument that IVM disrespects nature or the naturalness of meat. It says that this is very vague and splits naturalness into three categories, “historical naturalness (concerning how something came to be), property naturalness (concerning something’s present properties) and relational naturalness (concerning the relationship between people and some being or object).” The article disregards property naturalness saying, “Insofar as IVM can provide a rough cellular facsimile of real meat, property naturalness will not be relevant.” However, I believe most consumers of meat would agree that just because on a cellular level it is the same as the cells in an animal, that does not mean the naturalness of the IVM is the same as the naturalness of the slaughtered meat. I would agree with them too because although the composition of the meat might be exactly the same as the composition of slaughtered meat the history of each is different. IVM did not grow on the body of an animal to adulthood and then slaughtered for meat. This history, the life and experiences of the animal is what makes it different from IVM and thus why people consider this alternative to be “unnatural”. This concept of unnaturalness of IVM is something people will need to be dissuaded of if IVM is to become commercially successful.

The second naturalness discussed in the article is historical naturalness to which it is argued that, “historical objections are not very plausible — the use of innumerable inanimate tools with unnatural origins is unobjectionable, and there are no obvious reasons why unnatural origin in itself should be a special problem for IVM.” I agree with this argument for the fact that humans have dominated historical naturalness. We have changed the world to suit ourselves even though it may harm ecosystems and the planet. The argument that IVM would ruin historical naturalness is not grounded on any base and just seems to be an argument used by traditional animal factories to preserve their market and sources of income.

The last part of the naturalness argument is about how IVM would affect the natural relationship between people and animal raised meat. The argument here is that by eating IVM we might lose our respect for the natural world or more specifically the part of the natural world in which we raise animals and farm them for their meat. According to this argument we need to respect our dependence on animals for the food they provide us. Here the main argument points are respect and dependence. We rely on animals and we have to respect that reliance, that dependence on animals.

The paper however, argues that there is no need to preserve dependency. Humans do not need to be dependent in order to respect. They give an analogy to prove this point: “Suppose one had been dependent on a close friend for housing for many years. The fact that one had been dependent on that friend in the past is no reason to refuse to move out when a better living situation becomes available. One should be grateful to the friend, to be sure, but gratefulness is perfectly compatible with moving on.”

Another example of a similar situation to IVM is the pharmaceutical industry. In the days before pharmacy human used plants and herbs to cure ailments whereas today, we extract those ingredients that have those healing properties and sell it in a form that is radically different from plants and animals. This form being pills, tablets, liquids, etc. Yet there is no outrage because we did not preserve the ‘natural relationship’ between humans and plants.