As a response to the varied environmental, public health, and animal welfare challenges of contemporary animal food production, advocates of plant-based and cell-based animal food alternatives have ...championed those products as key to feeding the growing global population. This review offers an overview of key arguments in favor of and in opposition to animal product alternatives, and from there situates the debate within literature on food system change. It concludes that animal product alternatives are most likely to be incorporated as reforms within the corporate food regime and are generally incompatible with food sovereignty perspectives. Whether animal product alternatives could align with the food justice approach, however, is less clear. An agenda that operationalizes plant-based and cell-based animal product alternatives through a lens of “food tech justice” might offer a productive path forward for food system health, equity, and sustainability.
A variety of advocates argue that industrialized animal food production creates major problems related to the global food supply, climate change, animal suffering, and diet-related public health ...maladies. The alternative protein sector - encompassing both the nascent cell-based meat industry (also known as cultured, lab-grown, clean, cultivated, or in vitro meat) and the long-standing but evolving enterprise of plant-based meat production - has emerged in response. With a focus on the reality-defining power of metaphors, this article draws from a mixed set of qualitative materials to investigate the perspectives of alternative protein advocates, identifying two dominant conceptual metaphors that permeate their discourse. First, the metaphor that "meat is made" aims to transform the concept of meat itself, such that it is decoupled from its long-standing connection to animal farming and is understood instead as a set of tastes and textures that can be reconstructed through food science and biotechnology. Second, the metaphor of "the market" for alternative meats situates innovation, capital investment, and insights from behavioral economics and marketing as the primary agents for creating a "post-animal bioeconomy." At the same time as these metaphors highlight particular aspects of the enterprise, they also serve to downplay a set of public concerns, including those related to the sector's overall public health, cultural, economic, and ecological impacts. At a moment when alternative meats are being granted increased public attention, understanding the metaphors that characterize the industry offers environmental communication scholars the opportunity to examine its promise and limitations.
More than just food Broad, Garrett M
2016., 20160126, 2016, 2016-02-09, Letnik:
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The industrial food system has created a crisis in the United States that is characterized by abundant food for privileged citizens and “food deserts” for the historically marginalized. In response, ...food justice activists based in low-income communities of color have developed community-based solutions, arguing that activities like urban agriculture, nutrition education, and food-related social enterprises can drive systemic social change. Focusing on the work of several food justice groups—including Community Services Unlimited, a South Los Angeles organization founded as the nonprofit arm of the Southern California Black Panther Party—More Than Just Food explores the possibilities and limitations of the community-based approach, offering a networked examination of the food justice movement in the age of the nonprofit industrial complex.
Advocates of indoor vertical farming have pitched the enterprise as key to the future of food, an opportunity to use technological innovation to increase local food production, bolster urban ...sustainability, and create a world in which there is “real food” for everyone. At the same time, critics have raised concerns about the costs, energy usage, social impacts, and overall agricultural viability of these efforts, with some insisting that existing low-tech and community-based solutions of the “good food movement” offer a better path forward. Drawing from a mix of participant observation and other qualitative methods, this article examines the work of Square Roots, a Brooklyn-based indoor vertical farming company cofounded by entrepreneur Kimbal Musk and technology CEO Tobias Peggs. In an effort to create a market for what I refer to as “techno-local food,” Square Roots pitches its products as simultaneously “real” and technologically optimized. As a way to build trust in these novel products and better connect consumers with producers, Square Roots leans on transparency as a publicity tool. The company’s Transparency Timeline, for instance, uses photos and a narrative account of a product’s life-cycle to tell its story “from seed-to-store,” allowing potential customers to “know their farmer.” The information Square Roots shares, however, offers a narrow peek into its operations, limiting the view of operational dynamics that could help determine whether the company is actually living up to its promise. The research provides a clear case study of an organization using transparency–publicity as market strategy, illustrating the positive possibilities that such an approach can bring to consumer engagement, while also demonstrating how the tactic can distract from a company’s stated social responsibility goals.
At a time when agri-food biotechnologies are receiving a surge of investment, innovation, and public interest in the United States, it is common to hear both supporters and critics call for open and ...inclusive dialogue on the topic. Social scientists have a potentially important role to play in these discursive engagements, but the legacy of the intractable genetically modified (GM) food debate calls for some reflection regarding the best ways to shape the norms of that conversation. This commentary argues that agri-food scholars interested in promoting a more constructive agri-food biotechnology discussion could do so by blending key insights, as well as guarding against key shortcomings, from the fields of science communication and science and technology studies (STS). Science communication’s collaborative and translational approach to the public understanding of science has proven pragmatically valuable to scientists in academia, government, and private industry, but it has too often remained wedded to deficit model approaches and struggled to explore deeper questions of public values and corporate power. STS’s critical approach has highlighted the need for multi-stakeholder power-sharing and the integration of diverse knowledge systems into public engagement, but it has done little to grapple with the prevalence of misinformation in movements against GM foods and other agri-food biotechnologies. Ultimately, a better agri-food biotechnology conversation will require a strong foundation in scientific literacy as well as conceptual grounding in the social studies of science. The paper concludes by describing how, with attention to the structure, content, and style of public engagement in the agri-food biotechnology debates, social scientists can play a productive conversational role across a variety of academic, institutional, community-level, and mediated contexts.
Effective altruism is a conceptual approach and emerging social movement that uses data-driven reasoning to channel social economy resources toward philanthropic activities. Priority cause areas for ...effective altruists include global poverty, existential risks to humanity, and animal welfare. Indeed, a significant subset of the movement argues that animal factory farming, in particular, is a problem of great scope, one that is overly neglected and offers the potential for massive reductions in global suffering. This paper explores the philosophical and methodological tenets of these “effective animal advocates,” offering empirical qualitative insight into their motivations and perspectives. The work also considers the implications of the effective altruists’ entrance into the arena of animal advocacy, taking note of how various factions within both the effective altruist and animal protection movements have received their conceptual and practical interventions. The research highlights several potential contributions of the effective animal advocates, as their commitment to evaluate and amplify pragmatic solutions to the problems of animal suffering has the opportunity to shift institutional and consumer behaviors in ways the animal protection movement has struggled to do in the past. At the same time, key issues related to the community’s research rigor and measurability biases, its lack of demographic diversity, and its tendency to valorize corporate-driven technological solutions open it up to criticism from internal and external detractors alike.
In recent years, new forms of high-tech controlled environment agriculture (CEA) have received increased attention and investment. These systems integrate a suite of technologies – including ...automation, LED lighting, vertical plant stacking, and hydroponic fertilization – to allow for greater control of temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide, oxygen, and light in an enclosed growing environment. Proponents insist that CEA can produce sustainable, nutritious, and tasty local food, particularly for the cities of the future. At the same time, a variety of critics raise concerns about its environmental impacts and energy use, high startup costs, and consumer accessibility challenges, among other issues. At this stage, however, relatively little research has explored actual consumer knowledge and attitudes related to CEA processes and products. Guided by theories of sense-making, this article draws from structured interviews with local food consumers in New York City to examine what people know and think about high-tech CEA. From there, it explores the extent to which CEA fits into consumer conceptualizations of what makes for “good food.” Key findings emphasize that significant gaps in public understanding of CEA remain, that CEA products’ success will depend on the ability of the industry to deliver on its environmental promises, and that concerns about “unnatural” aspects of CEA will need to be allayed. Given the price premium at which high-tech CEA products are currently sold, the industry’s expansion will depend in large part on its ability to convince value-oriented food consumers that the products meet the triple-bottom-line of economic, social, and environmental sustainability goals.
This commentary examines the emerging field of cellular agriculture, which aims to use the tools of synthetic biology to create a world of abundant, nutritious, sustainable, and ethical meat and ...other animal products without animal slaughter. Concerned that a lack of public acceptance could present an obstacle to success, the field has coalesced around a set of communicative practices - based not only in sharing information, but also in communicating shared values - that industry leaders believe will prove effective at persuading the public. We term this paradigm "Deficit Model 2.0," a hybrid framework that retains essential elements of the traditional deficit model of science communication while incorporating new understandings of culture and public engagement into the approach. We outline the deficiencies of this perspective and offer suggestions for a more sustainable approach to cellular agricultural and its food system communication strategy.
In recent years, a number of so-called "farm protection" or "ag-gag" laws have been proposed and passed in state legislatures across the USA. These laws generally ban the undercover photographing or ...videotaping of industrial animal agricultural production and processing facilities. Proponents of the legislation suggest that such bills protect local farm economies and prevent misinformation campaigns by animal rights activists. Diverse sets of critics have argued against the bills, suggesting that they prevent whistleblowers from exposing animal cruelty and stand in the way of the public's right to know. This paper analyzes the debate by blending theory from science and technology studies regarding the social production of knowledge and ignorance with communication theory that explores the power of storytelling in shaping public understandings of social life. It investigates the stories told by three oppositional stakeholder groups-members of industrial animal agribusiness who defend the legislation, small-scale producers and consumers who believe the legislation prevents productive transparency, as well as animal advocacy and first amendment interests who believe the legislation masks fundamental flaws in the contemporary animal agricultural system. The paper provides insight into how competing mediated narratives frame ideological battles over the present and future of animal production processes. It demonstrates how fundamental and often opposing value systems construct what we consider knowledge and non-knowledge in the context of our contemporary risk society and in the digital media age.
This paper reports on the findings from a series of virtual focus groups that explored consumer perceptions of animal-free dairy (AFD), an emerging type of animal product alternative produced using ...the tools of synthetic biology and precision fermentation. Focus group participants came from an international sample of potential “early adopters.” To stimulate conversation, participants were presented with a series of visual “moodboards” that framed key arguments both in favor of and in opposition to AFD. Three primary thematic clusters emerged from the discussion. The first focused on issues of “process, safety, and regulation,” centered on the general reaction of participants to the concept of AFD, their primary concerns, key questions, and the assurances they would need in order to support its advancement. The second focused on issues of “consumer preferences and priorities,” highlighted by the often complicated, and sometimes outright contradictory, stated consumer interests of the participants. The third focused on issues of “food technology and the future,” wherein participants expressed broader views on the role of food technology in society, generally speaking, and the potential futures of AFD, specifically. The general consensus among participants was a cautious openness to the idea of AFD. Outright opposition to the concept was rare, but so too was unabashed enthusiasm. Instead, respondents had a number of questions about the nature of the technological process, its overall safety and regulatory standards, its potential contributions to individual health and climate change mitigation, as well as its organoleptic qualities and price to consumers. Among the positive frames, claims about animal welfare were deemed the most pertinent and convincing. Among the negative frames, concerns about messing with nature and creating potential health risks to individuals were seen as the strongest arguments against AFD. The findings suggest that the key to AFD's future as a viable market option will depend in large part on the extent to which it can clearly demonstrate that it is preferable to conventional dairy or its plant-based competitors, particularly in the arena of taste, but also across considerations of health and safety, nutrition, environmental effects, and animal well-being.
