Our food system is inefficient. Billions of animals live lives in deplorable conditions in order to feed us with meat that, to top it off, degrades the environment.
Animal protein is an expensive necessity for many. The basis on which Western culture developed. For others it is something more: a serious moral problem that must be tackled. And then a possible solution arises: laboratory meat, a supposedly neutral way of continuing to consume it. Many animals will appreciate the innovation, there is no doubt.
Technology helps but, once again, it does not make us better. Quite the contrary. What it gives us is the possibility of another subcontract our big decisions, to save ourselves the intellectual effort. Of being a little more selfish in a world that is already very selfish.
Intellectual entropy (or why technology doesn’t make us better)
Technology will be able to help solve animal abuse, or alleviate refugee crises or deal with famine. Moreover, imagine that a miraculous application was capable of solving the climate crisis. It would be wonderful, of course. But, at the same time, it would mean a resounding collective failure: that of not having been capable as humans of having made the moral effort to put an end to a problem. The human being as a collective would not have been able to advance morally.
We delegate in the advances what we should solve with reflection and humanism. Dealing with the big world issues, after all, is a good opportunity to deal with a good part of our own personal problems. And the technology there can’t help. Again, rather the opposite.