The End of Animal Farming: How Scientists, Entrepreneurs, and Activists Are Building an Animal-Free Food

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Animal abuse and neglect have become commonplace on factory farms – so common, that they are not even thought of as anything other than a part of the process. You might have seen images or videos to demonstrate that fact. Conserve Human Health Taking just a few cells from an animal and growing meat that might become a burger or steak is far more sustainable than breeding millions of animals for slaughter. Not only does the latter practice harm animals and contribute to their suffering, but it’s hard on our natural resources. Thus, rhetoric against animal exploitation institutions—corporations, industries, governments, other organizations, or society as a whole—could spark more moral outrage by placing the blame or guilt on those institutions rather than on the individual.

The book faced criticism from Current Affairs due to its focus on effective altruism. Nathan J. Robinson wrote: [5] MFA (2019) Undercover investigations. Mercy for Animals. https://mercyforanimals.org/investigations. Accessed 22 Feb 2019 Although data is limited, there is also surprisingly large support even for radical policy change to animal agriculture. For example, 47% of U.S. adults supporting a ban on slaughterhouses and 32% believing ‘animals deserve the exact same rights as people to be free from harm and exploitation’ (Riffkin, 2015; Reese, 2017). Effecting real-world institutional change is much more difficult than achieving poll results, but this still constitutes evidence for the relative tractability of institutional change, given fewer than 1% of U.S. adults follow a vegan diet (Faunalytics, 2014).Anthis' current projects focus on the technical and social dimensions of artificial intelligence. He is currently a Peters, Adele (6 November 2018). "Can we end animal farming by the end of the century?". Fast Company . Retrieved 5 August 2018. Silverblatt A (2004) Media as social institution. Am Behav Sci 48:35–41. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764204267249

Nonetheless, there is a prima facie unclear and important trade-off in many contexts. Relatively few social movements have focused heavily on individual consumption. The main potential examples are public health campaigns, such as tobacco control, obesity reduction, and healthy eating. These campaigns have almost necessarily focused on changing individuals because the primary motivations behind the changes have been improving personal health. Someone who stops smoking primarily benefits their own life, such as by reducing the likelihood of developing lung cancer, though of course there are secondary impacts like second-hand smoke or the influence on children who are more likely to smoke if a parent does (Vuolo and Staff, 2013). Farmed animal activism is instead centred on the motivation of helping animals or the environment, and it can either take an individual approach (e.g., convincing people one by one to change diets) or an institutional approach (e.g., banning animal agriculture, an effort that may be opposed by consumers but could nonetheless be implemented via institutional changes). And clean meat is not being made for vegans and vegetarians. That would be redundant since those people have already stopped eating meat. Clean meat is potentially a faster way to offer current meat-consuming public a way to pollute less and to cause much less animal suffering than by eating meat coming from the factory farming and slaughtering process.We don’t think of Fido or Fluffy as food. In fact, for most of us, the idea of turning any dog or cat into food meant for human consumption turns our stomachs. At least, it does mine. Yet we’re not affording our farm friends that same courtesy. Instead of allowing them to live freely, without exploitation, we’re processing them for our benefit. Blanken I, van de Ven N, Zeelenberg M (2015) A meta-analytic review of moral licensing. Pers Soc Psychol Bull 41:540–558. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167215572134