UCL STS Seminar series: Analysing the cultural politics of cultured meat

Analysing the cultural politics of cultured meat  

Abstract

Cultured meat is a novel technology that seeks to grow meat in bioreactors from cells, as opposed to raising and killing animals. In June 2023 it became legal to sell and consume cultured meat in the USA (three years after being legalised first in Singapore). I've been studying cultured meat from an STS perspective since 
2008, interviewing scientists, funders and 
entrepreneurs, and attending key events where I can. In this talk I will tell a combined story of the ongoing development of the technology, and the ongoing development of my own project. Key will be the processes of becoming through which the cultured meat community have asserted a set of meanings, identities, and a politics for cultured meat, in an attempt to make it simultaneously as normal as it is world changing.