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There will not be one type of cultured chicken. There will be kosher cultured chicken, halal cultured chicken, and ... vegan cultured chicken?
When you’re a vegetarian, you get used to dealing with sneering, horrified, nosy, and bewildered questions of “...but why?!”
My own well-practiced answer — designed to minimize confrontation — goes something like this: I was raised not eating red meat and then when I was a teenager, I became obsessed with our cultural disconnect from our food and decided that if I couldn’t stomach killing and preparing an animal myself, then I had no right to eat it. But don’t worry, my husband eats meat! I’m not judgmental!
The truth is actually much more complicated and nuanced (my “long version” includes anecdotes about my stint at a wildlife rehabilitation center, my father’s heart attack, and an explanation of why I eat meat when I travel abroad), but I usually don’t get that far when talking with strangers. That’s because what we eat and why are deeply personal questions that can touch on everything from one’s religious beliefs to their code of ethics, cultural and philosophical values, health, and concerns about environmental impact. Every person who observes dietary restrictions around meat has spent at least some time — perhaps very little, maybe every single day — privately weighing these considerations.
Then earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture threw all of that carefully considered reasoning out the window by approving the sale of lab-grown chicken.
Don’t get me wrong: This is incredible news. Around 15% of global emissions come from livestock farming (including dairy and eggs), and it would likely be impossible to get everyone on the planet to switch to a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle. Indeed, for animal rights activists, “cell-cultivated” or “cultured” meat has long been akin to cold fusion for food — that is, a science-fiction solution that theoretically fixes everything.
But now, using cells harvested from live animals, companies like Upside Foods and Good Meat are able to safely grow animal fat and muscle tissue in stainless steel tanks, resulting in what is essentially slaughter-free animal protein for human consumption. When I spoke with the influential animal welfare philosopher Peter Singer a few months ago about the ethical quandaries of eating meat during the climate crisis, he’d cited such advancements in cultured meat (at the time, only available in Singapore) as an exciting, if far-off, opportunity, telling me “if we can get that economically competitive, maybe that’ll be a solution to the problem.”
The widespread proliferation of cultured meat is admittedly still a long way off. For the time being, lab-grown chicken will only be sold in select U.S. restaurants and an enormous amount of scaling is required for cultured meat to begin to replace industrial farming. There are also concerns that current production methods are not actually more sustainable than live-animal farming. Plus, there is a squeamish factor of “meat grown in tanks” to be cleared.
But the USDA approval is still nothing short of a game-changer. “I’m vegan for ethical reasons, and so if people can enjoy the familiar tastes of meat and textures of chicken and whatever else without animals dying, then that’s a huge win in my book,” Nisha Vora, a vegan recipe developer and cookbook author who runs the YouTube channel and blogRainbow Plant Life, told me. Still, “it will be weird to eat chicken!” she admitted.
Vora isn’t sure yet how much lab-grown meat will factor into her future recipes, explaining that many of her followers are interested in whole foods and cooking that is meat-adjacent, “so I don’t think I have a huge swath of my audience that’s really like, ‘oh, I can’t wait for meat,’ you know?” She observed, though, that lab-grown meat could potentially make labor-intensive parts of some of her recipes, like her popular vegan Crunchwrap Supreme dupe, easier and quicker, albeit not quite as healthy. “If you are vegan for health reasons, or you’re plant-based for health reasons … then maybe that’s not what you want to be eating,” she pointed out.
Omnivores might be scratching their heads at these fine nuances, wondering why they’re a big deal: No animals are killed, can’t you people ever be happy? But it’s actually the fact that the animals aren’t killed that might prevent a quarter of the world’s population from eating lab-grown meat.
Many religions have customs regarding meat consumption, including Judaism, Hinduism, certain denominations of Christianity, and Islam — groups that together make up approximately half of the global population. That means there is a lot of confusion and theological debate when it comes to cultured meat. As The Washington Post once memorably put it, “If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, tastes like a duck, but you’re not supposed to eat a duck, does God consider this ‘cheating’?”
The answer is, it depends.
Take halal, the Islamic laws governing food. A number of rules must be met for meat to be considered permissible to eat, including proper slaughtering of the animal. It is, for example, forbidden to eat an animal that dies naturally and becomes a carcass. This is an essential technicality for the 25% of people globally who keep halal.
“Any severed part of a surviving (land) livestock animal can become a carcass” — including its cells, one recent Malaysian study explained. As such, lab-grown meat would only be halal if the animal the cells were collected from was “slaughtered according to the Shariah law.” Such an interpretation has been echoed by religious authorities in Pakistan and Indonesia, the two countries with the largest Muslim populations. (Kosher-slaughtered origin animals may be acceptable in the eyes of rabbis, too, although Jewish authorities have gone back and forth on the matter).
But using cells from a slaughtered animal might be a non-starter for some hardcore animal rights activists since the shift makes the lab-grown cells ever so slightly less cruelty-free. PETA has long been a proponent and backer of cultivated meat, although on the grounds that “no animal died for it.” As PETA’s Catie Cryar clarified for me, “It is our hope that the original process used to obtain cells will be superseded by scientific advances, but at the very least, our goal would be to have no additional animals slaughtered after the original cell lines were obtained.” That means there is potentially a world in which even cultured meat gets labels distinguishing it as either “vegan friendly” or “halal and kosher” (currently, most cultivated meats are made from live-animal cells).
Hindus, meanwhile, may not eat cultured beef regardless of its origin due to the sacred status of cows, one 2020 survey found, although overall Hinduism was “the only religious group who were … more willing to eat cultured meat than conventional meat … perhaps highlighting the motivation to avoid harming animals.” And of course, all of this generalizes the positions of enormously diverse world religions — every worshipper will have their own perspective.
Then there is a whole other sect of non-meat-eaters that we’ve largely ignored: those who abstain for health reasons. While meat substitutes on the market today are made from plants, lab-grown meat is still animal meat. But that also means eating cultured steaks isn’t any better for you than eating real steaks. Even if cellular meat does eventually take off, there will be plenty of people who avoid it simply because they don’t want to include meat in their diet, no matter what its animal or, uh, tank of origin is.
Now let me guess, you nosy Nelly — you’re wondering at this point what I am going to do? I admit my thinking has been all over the place. Sure, when it comes to my animal-ethics-forward viewpoints, there should be nothing stopping me from eating lab-grown meat. I’m a big believer in open-mindedness and adaption and I fully support lab-grown meat being available on the wider market. But I also enjoy the health benefits of eating plant-based, and it’s conceptually just strange to think of myself eating chicken protein even if no chickens were harmed in the making of my meal.
Mostly I just think it’s funny how one little USDA stamp of approval has the potential to unmoor my entire identity as a vegetarian — whatever that even means anymore. We’ll probably need to come up with new terms to distinguish between people who don’t eat animal proteins, period, and people who don’t eat slaughtered animals.
I’m sure, also, that there will eventually be a need for a term to describe meat purists who avoid tank-grown proteins. Then at last it’ll be my turn to snort and ask, “...but why?!”
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Today’s conversation is with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications, a D.C.-based communications firm that focuses on defending zero- and low-carbon energy and federal investments in climate action. Moyer, a veteran communications adviser who previously worked on Capitol Hill, has some hot takes as of late about how he believes industry and political leaders have in his view failed to properly rebut attacks on solar and wind energy, in addition to the Inflation Reduction Act. On Tuesday he sent an email blast out to his listserv – which I am on – that boldly declared: “The Wind Industry’s Strategy is Failing.”
Of course after getting that email, it shouldn’t surprise readers of The Fight to hear I had to understand what he meant by that, and share it with all of you. So here goes. The following conversation has been abridged and lightly edited for clarity.
What are you referencing when you say, ‘the wind industry’s strategy is failing’?
Anyone in the climate space, in the clean energy space, the worst thing you can do is go silent and pretend that this is just going to go away. Even if it’s the president and the administration delivering the attacks, I think there’s an important strategy that’s been lacking in the wind and other sectors that I don’t think has been effective. There was a recent E&E News story that noted a couple of wind developers when asked for comment just say, “No comment.” This to me misses a really big opportunity to not get in a fight with people but talk about the benefits of wind.
Not taking advantage of milestones like ground breaking or construction starting is a missed opportunity to drive public opinion. If you lose support in public opinion, you’re going to lose support from public officials, because they largely follow public opinion.
And there’s no way that’s going to change if you don’t take the opportunities to talk about the benefits that wind can provide, in terms of good-paying local jobs or supplying more electrons to the grid. By almost any measure the strategy employed so far has not really worked.
Okay, but what is the wind industry strategy that isn’t working? What are they doing to rebut attacks on the technology, on property values, on the environment?
We’re not hearing them. We’re not hearing those arguments.
You can’t let criticisms go unanswered.It would better serve the industry and these companies to push back against criticisms. It’s not like you can’t anticipate what they are. And what do you have to lose? You’re in the worst position of any energy sector in this political moment. It would be nice to see some fight and sharp campaign skills and strategic effort in terms of communication. And there’s no strategic value from what I can tell in [being silent].
I understand not wanting to pick a fight with folks who hold your fate in their hands, but there’s a way to thread a needle that isn’t antagonizing anybody but also making sure the facts have been heard. And that’s been missing.
You’d specifically said the industry should stop ‘being paralyzed in fear and start going on offense.’ What does that look like to you?
Taking every opportunity to get your message out there. The lowest hanging fruit is when a reporter comes and asks you, What do you think about this criticism? You should definitely reply. It’s lifting up third-party voices that are benefiting from a specific project, talking about the economic impacts more broadly, talking about the benefits to the grid.
There’s a whole number of tools in the toolbox to put to use but the toolboxes remain shut thus far. Targeted paid media, elevating the different voices and communities that are going to resonate with different legislators, and certainly the facts are helpful. Also having materials prepared, like validators and frequently asked questions and answers.
You’re trying to win. You’re trying to get your project to be successful and deliver jobs and tax revenue. And I think it would be wise for companies to look at the playbooks of electoral campaigns, because there’s lots of tools that campaigns use.
How do renewable energy developers get around the problem of partisanship? How do you get outta that through a campaign approach?
These projects are decided locally. It’s deciding who the decision-makers are and not just letting opponents who are getting talking points through right-wing media show up and reiterate these talking points. Oftentimes, there’s no one on the pro side even showing up at all, and it makes it really easy for city councils to oppose projects. They’re losing by forfeit. We can’t keep doing that.
And more on this week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Chautauqua, New York – More rural New York towns are banning renewable energy.
2. Virginia Beach, Virginia – Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project will learn its fate under the Trump administration by this fall, after a federal judge ruled that the Justice Department must come to a decision on how it’ll handle a court challenge against its permits by September.
3. Bedford County, Pennsylvania – Arena Renewables is trying to thread a needle through development in one of the riskiest Pennsylvania counties for development, with an agriculture-fueled opposition risk score of 89.
4. Knox County, Ohio – The Ohio Power Siting Board has given the green light to Open Road Renewables’ much-watched Frasier Solar project.
5. Clay County, Missouri – We’ll find out next week if rural Missouri can still take it easy on a large solar project.
6. Clark County, Nevada – President Trump’s Bureau of Land Management has pushed back the permitting process for EDF Renewables’ Bonanza solar project by at least two months and possibly longer .
7. Klickitat County, Washington – Washington State has now formally overridden local opposition to Cypress Creek’s Carriger solar project after teeing up the decision in May.
It’s governor versus secretary of state, with the fate of the local clean energy industry hanging in the balance.
I’m seeing signs that the fight over a hydrogen project in Wyoming is fracturing the state’s Republican political leadership over wind energy, threatening to trigger a war over the future of the sector in a historically friendly state for development.
At issue is the Pronghorn Clean Energy hydrogen project, proposed in the small town of Glenrock in rural Converse County, which would receive power from one wind farm nearby and another in neighboring Niobrara County. If completed, Pronghorn is expected to produce “green” hydrogen that would be transported to airports for commercial use in jet fuel. It is backed by a consortium of U.S. and international companies including Acconia and Nordex.
One can guess why investors thought this rural Wyoming expanse would be an easier place to build: it’s an energy community situated in the middle of the Powder River Basin and the state’s Republican governor Mark Gordon has supported wind projects in the state publicly, not just with rhetoric but votes in favor of them on the State Board of Land Commissioners.
Wind is also often proposed on private land in Wyoming, which is supposed to make things easier. You may remember the Lucky Star and Twin Rivers wind farms, a pair of projects whose progress I’ve watched like a hawk because they’re tied to the future of wind permitting at the national level. As we first reported, the Trump administration is proceeding with potentially approving the transmission line for Lucky Star, a project that would be sited entirely on private land, and Twin Rivers received its final environmental review in the last days of the Biden administration, making it difficult for anti-wind advocates to curtail.
Unlike those projects, Pronghorn has created a fork in the road for wind in Wyoming. It’s because the people in its host community don’t seem to want it, the wind projects were on state land, and there’s politics at play.
Despite being considered an energy community, Converse and Niobrara are both areas with especially high opposition risk, according to Heatmap Pro, largely due to its low support for renewable energy, its demographics, and concerns about impacts to the local ranching economy. After Gordon and other members of the state land use board approved two wind facilities for the hydrogen project, a rancher living nearby sued the board with public support from the mayor of Glenrock and the area’s legislators in the statehouse. A member of the Converse County zoning board even published a “manifesto” against the project, detailing local concerns that are myriad and rooted in fears of overburden, ranging from water use and property value woes to a general resentment toward an overall rise in wind turbines across the county and state.
What’s probably most concerning to wind supporters is that this local fight is bubbling up into a statewide political fracture between Gordon and his secretary of state Chuck Gray, who is believed to be a future candidate for governor. Grey was the lone dissenting vote against the two wind projects for Pronghorn, saying he did not support the projects because they would be assisted by federal tax credits Trump is trying to gut. Gray then took to mocking the governor on social media for his stance on wind while posting photos of broken wind turbines. Gordon wound up responding to his secretary of state accusing him of being the “only member of the state land board to vote against individual property rights and Wyoming schools.”
“That is his prerogative to be sure, but it demonstrates his disregard for the duties of his office and a determination to impose his personal preferences on others, no matter the cost,” Gordon stated.
I’ve been reaching out to Pronghorn and its founder Paul Martin to try and chat about what’s happening in Wyoming. I haven’t heard back, and if I do I’ll gladly follow this story up, but there’s a sign here of an issue in Wyoming whether Pronghorn gets built or not – areas of Wyoming may be on the verge of a breaking point on wind energy.
I heard about the Pronghorn project in conversations this week with folks who work on wind permitting issues in Wyoming and learned that the Gordon-Gray feud is emblematic of how the wind industry’s growth in the state is making local officials more wary of greenlighting projects. Whether Gordon’s position on private property wins out over Gray taking up the mantle of the anti-wind conservative critic may be the touchstone for the future of local planning decisions, too.
At least, that’s the sense I got talking to Sue Jones, a commissioner in Carbon County, directly southwest of Converse County. Jones admits she personally doesn’t care for wind farms and that it’s “no secret with the county, or the developers.” But so far, she hasn’t voted that way as a commissioner.
“If they meet all our rules and regs, then I’ve voted to give them a permit,” she told me. “You can’t just say no to anything. It’s a good thing that we value private property rights.”
Jones said the problem in Carbon County and other areas of Wyoming is “saturation level.” Areas of the state where only a handful of landowners hold thousands of acres? That’s probably fine for wind projects because there’s a low likelihood of a neighbor or two having a genuine grievance. But as wind has grown into population-denser areas of the state the dissent is becoming more frequent.
My gut feeling is that, as we’ve seen in many other instances, this resentment will bubble up and manifest as sweeping reform – unless the wind industry is able to properly address these growing concerns head on.