How Vegans Are Taking Over the Meat Industry
The animal rights movement is quietly revolutionizing our food supply.
It all started as most PETA campaigns do — with a seemingly gregarious stunt. In 2008, the animal rights organization offered up $1 million to the first scientist who could create and bring to market in vitro chicken — poultry meat created from a few chicken cells, rather than from a whole bird.
But PETA’s proposition wasn’t a mere media stunt. If anything, it was foreshadowing the massive shift happening in our food system — a not-too-distant future where vegans are running the global meat supply.
Scientists tried. Teams at the University of Missouri and the Netherlands’ Maastricht University worked diligently, but the cost of bringing lab-grown meat, “clean meat” as it has come to be known, was prohibitive. PETA, willing to go to any lengths to bring a viable alternative to the massive livestock industry, extended its initial 2012 deadline to March 2014.
Still, no one was able to claim the prize. Research labs and for-profit businesses were tempted by the million-dollar PETA bounty; but they also saw beyond that — the ability to “grow” lab meat without the inherent problem of having an animal attached to it would revolutionize our food system, laying the groundwork for one…
