IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2015 - 57

Emerging engineering techniques have
enabled the growth of animal muscle and fat
cells in vitro, as opposed to the traditional
in vivo process, which requires the raising
and slaughtering of a whole animal.

technologies powerful enough to address such significant challenges often come with unforseen consequences and a host of costs and benefits that seldom
accrue to the same actors. In extreme cases, they can
even be destabilizing to social, institutional, economic,
and cultural systems [5].
This investigation seeks to complement ongoing technical research efforts in two ways. First, a more balanced
consideration of the impacts of in vitro meat (IVM) will be
sought in the areas where potential benefits are already
well-publicized. This will include unintended and potentially negative consequences for human health, the environment, global hunger, and ethics. Second, the implications
for seemingly remote, but still coupled, systems will be
explored. That is, as shown in Fig. 2, the complexity inherent in the world ensures that changes in food production
technologies could have repercussions far beyond the
selection of foods sold in the grocery store. The repercussions will modify norms in environmental, economic, and
social domains in ways that have not yet been considered
in prevailing scientific analyses or public discussions.
A better understanding of the potential implications of
cultured meat could serve to facilitate effective decisionmaking as the technology becomes commercialized.
To address these goals, distinct environmental, economic, and social analyses are being performed. This
article is a report of findings from a social assessment
consisting of three expert focus groups, or workshops,
held on the campus of Arizona State University in the
spring of 2013. These workshops each brought together
6-8 scholars with expertise in a number of areas including law, journalism, agriculture, environmental engineering, tissue engineering, technology and society,
and emerging technologies. These diverse groups were
asked to qualitatively explore the possible social ramifications of IVM at all scales, from personal to systemic.

Cultured Meat
Meat consists primarily of skeletal muscle and fat cells
in varying proportions. Emerging engineering techniques
MARCH 2015

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have enabled the growth of these cells in vitro, as
opposed to the traditional in vivo process which
requires the raising and slaughtering of a whole animal.
A number of in vitro cultivation methods have been
proposed, but perhaps the most promising [6] begins by
extracting adult stem cells from a donor animal tissue
sample (the animal remains otherwise unharmed). These
stem cells are then submerged in a nutrient broth that
enables the cells to grow, divide, and increase in mass.
Even though Dr. Post believes that the process could
be scaled up for commercial meat production in perhaps 10-20 years [7], he has also stated that challenges
still exist in terms of ensuring quality and safety of the
final products [8]. One of these is the need to develop
and optimize synthetic (animal-free) nutrient growth
media. Another is the need to design production facilities that ensure all cells receive sufficient nutrients and
oxygen (cells will die if they are more than 0.5 mm from
a nutrient supply for a significant period of time [6]).
In order to impart a familiar and acceptable texture,
carneries must also promote cell exercise. Absent
exercise, meat grown in vitro could be "weak and
textureless" [9]. Additional challenges associated with
IVM commercialization include the high cost of production [10] and the "yuck" response elicited by some
individuals [11]. While these factors are certainly not
trivial, the goal of this investigation is to assess the possible social consequences of this technology; therefore,
we assumed that all of the aforementioned challenges
had been overcome and that cultured meat had all but
replaced traditional, agricultural meat by 2050.

Social Assessment Workshops
The series of workshops was designed to create a space
for discussing the broader aspects of cultured meat,
and to encourage a creative interplay of ideas from
diverse perspectives. Prospective workshop participants were identified based on their research expertise
and its relevance to the goals of this investigation. The
workshop invitations included an article that provided

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