Making lab-grown meat: the politics and promises of growing edible muscle from stem cells

As part of the Sociology and Communications research seminars, Dr Neil Stephens will be discussing lab-grown meat:

For twenty years now scientists have been trying to grow meat in laboratories for human consumption. For the last ten of these I have been tracking their work through interviews, observations and documentary sources. In this talk I will describe how this technology and the community that support it have come into being. I will show how the community has moved from a fringe group of academics to a group of now around twenty start-up companies seeking to produce meat that they suggest is more ethical, environmentally responsible, and healthier, by growing it in vats from cells. In doing so, I’ll also analyse the socio-political futures this implies and the methods intended to bring them into being. This is very much a topic of the moment, 2018 has seen preview lab grown beef steaks, chicken nuggets, and pork sausages, as the technology has attained increased visibility in policy debates (including featuring in the most recent IPCC report, and, earlier this week, mention by Michael Gove MP, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, as a possible food revolution that the UK could lead). The talk will discuss climate change, regulatory stand-offs, human-animal relations, Silicon Valley venture capital, and what constitutes responsible edibility.

Neil Stephens is a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow based at Brunel University London. He is a sociologist and STS researcher and his current project focuses upon the socio-politics of 'Big Tissue': the mass production of human and animal body parts.

All welcome.