Hello friends,
I'm asking you to help me get this message to freelee and to as many vegans as possible.
Recently Freelee posted a video on her youtube channel supporting the new campaign/product supermeat. I first want to say that I truly believe that Freelee means well and has the best intentions, so if you read this Freelee, know that I am not against you, I just believe that you may not see the error in supporting this, and so I would like to share my opinion on this, and hopefully you will understand where I am coming from.
Lets start here, first of all. This is NOT a vegan product, it is a product derived from animal exploitation, even if this exploitation is minimal. A biopsy is taking a small sample of flesh from the animal, usually by the way of needle biopsy, but this campaign has not even made it clear as to how they take the flesh.
Yes, I get that if this product went mainstream and was eaten by millions of people, that it would cause LESS suffering. However, I'm asking you to think about something. You and other people such as Gary Yourofsky have told your followers that there is no such thing as humane meat, humane dairy, or humane eggs. And that it's not okay to take the milk from a cow even if it's free range and not harmed or killed. So how can you now be telling everyone that it's okay to take a small amount of actual flesh/tissue from the same animals???? And in this case it may even involve sticking a needle into the animal and confining these animals to farms just so that tissue can be taken from them.
We don't hear you or people like Gary Yourofsky telling people to support free range dairy farms simply because they cause LESS suffering than traditional dairy farms, but yet you are telling people to support this supermeat campaign because it causes LESS suffering. It really seems hypocritical to me. Again, I fully believe that you and Gary Yourofsky mean well, and at face value I can see why this whole supermeat campain LOOKS good, but I believe that if we actually deeply think about this, we will realize that it doesn't make sense for vegans to support it.
There is already an alternative to eating meat from killing animals, it's called veganism. We already have quite a few fakes meats and they are getting better and better. Companies like beyond meat and Gardein are beginning to make mock meats that really taste like the real thing, and as more and more people become vegan, more companies will invest more research and money into making mock meat products that are more like the real thing.
If millions of people actually begin to eat this supermeat, it will actually give people MORE of a reason not to go vegan, they will feel more secure with their decision to eat meat. In addition this will do NOTHING to end the suffering and injustice in the dairy and egg industries. It will only support people in continuing their degenerate habit, all while still causing exploitation and harm to animals, even if minimal.
When it comes to meat, dairy, and eggs, your message is not to support things which cause less suffering like free range meat, dairy, and eggs. Your message is to abolish the practice all together. So why are you changing your message now?
Is this not way too early to be jumping on the bandwagon of something that we don't even fully understand yet?
When signing up for the website, it says the following: "Nor do we allow endorsement of non-vegan items or practises which involve the imprisonment, exploitation, abuse or murder of sentient beings."
How can you say this here, and you just made a video saying you support people taking chickens and exploiting and using them for their tissue samples to be able to grow meat in a lab setting? Supermeat is not a vegan product and it involves the exploitation of animals. It involves taking small amounts of flesh from animals. What right to we have to do that? Yes, I understand that this form of exploitation is MUCH less than what goes on in slaughterhouses and factory farms, but it is exploitation none the less. As Vegans shouldn't we support ending the practice all together. Think about it, would you be in support of scientists performing a biopsy on an animal, taking a small tissue sample so that they can develop a vaccine? Wouldn't you label that as exploitation? So how is this any different?
To be blunt, I feel that this supermeat campaign is the newest and most deceptive humane meat lie there has ever been and that is is so deceptive that EVEN VEGANS are supporting it.
Taking tissue (meat) from an animal and using it to grow something in a lab for human use is exploitation. I cannot see how us vegans can support it.
Veganism is starting to actually have a large impact, the last thing we need is for vegans to be supporting the consumption of meat which still includes the exploitation of animals.
Freelee, please think about this, you have a lot of influence in the vegan community. You may be supporting something which goes against your own values and may not realize it.
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One thing I might add is that Gary Yourofsky actually did find a humane way to eat meat. He said it himself that it's a loophole if you eat the meat of an animal that died of natural causes. He says that here:
I made a 40' video about this, (done Live) and I used this thread in my video, for material (near the end). Most commenters were against super meat.
I also read through their web-site, and the FAQ's. Found some "questionable" statements by them.
Just to add, from what I've learned they wouldn't keep prodding animals... it would be one chicken, one pig, one cow, one fish, etc. and then they're done.
isn't this pretty much Cloning? how is this better?
AN IMPORTANT UPDATE: Well, I have tried to keep an open mind about all of this. One of the main problems is that the super meat company has not been very transparent about exactly how all of this is done. The company largely being made up of vegans, they should have known that they needed to be specific about how many animals would be used and that sort of thing. THANKFULLY however, the marketing VP of the company a few others with the company who are all long time vegans have answered these questions.
They stated that for each type of meat, only ONE animal would have to be used and it would only have to be biopsied one time. For example, they would take one chicken, biopsy a tissue sample one time and then keep replicating the cells from the meat they created. There would not need to be continual biopsies done or a steady supply of animals to be used and animals would not have to be held captive at all. This is what they say anyway. If this is actually the case, though I wish not even ONE animal had to be exploited. I'd have to say that it would be rational to choose the lesser of the two evils if this would actually cause all of the meat eaters of the world to only eat this stuff. They would have to do it with all kinds of meat though, and it still wouldn't solve the issues with the dairy and egg industries.
What I am hoping, is that if the company remains faithful to their statements, and soon this becomes the only kind of meat that one can buy, perhaps it can be easy to actually make it illegal to kill animals for their meat since not even meat eaters would have to kill animals in order to get meat. In addition, hopefully this could be a temporary compromise which would eventually lead to universal veganism. What I'm afraid of, is that even a lot of vegans will start eating this stuff and get back to being addicted to meat and really forget the entire vegan message. I've noticed a lot of vegans actually saying they would eat this. Even if it was ethical, are we not supposed to be the example to the rest of the world? Human beings are not flesh eaters, it is not normal or natural to eat the flesh of another living being, even if it comes from a lab. If this can be a step forward for veganism then I guess it's a good thing.
The problem is always what they do with the technology. We get a lot of promises but behind closed doors anything can happen. We know the difference between what they promote, for ex. grass fed free range humanely cared blahblah, and reality. So when they say that the suffering will be minimal, we have the right to doubt. I think the project should make it clear what will be allowed or not and have rules insuring the total transparency of the process, so that anybody can check at anytime and report any "problem".
Anyways, I don't yet believe that this technology will work, creating muscle and all kind of animal tissues is not as easy as they make it believe, we've had the medical industry trying to do so for decades, to build replacement organs for human patients, and they are still not there yet. And they have billions in their pockets, vs $100 000 for that startup.
I'd prefer the governments to stop giving subsidies to the meat industry and start supporting healthier alternatives based on plants, like Beyond Meat for ex. Once plant based fake meats become really cheaper and available on a high scale, things will turn around.
As far as i know creating cultured meat has already been done, first cultured beef patty was eaten in august 2013.. But that was a very expensive burger.. they're reducing the cost and improving the quality.
There's a big difference between creating a functioning heart or lung or whatever that has to function inside someones body and a piece of muscle that has no other purpose then to be eaten.
My main question still is.. do you need to do a biopsy for every little piece of meat? can't you after the intial biopsy use that, cultivate it and keep cultivating it indefinitely, making the actual animal obsolete.
As Vegans, we can say that supermeat would in fact cause LESS harm than traditional factory farming which involves slaughter and a lot of abuse, but none the less, in producing supermeat there is animal exploitation. Chickens and whatever other animals they choose to use are forced to be the unwilling participants. A needle in stuck into them and some of their tissue is taken from them. This is blatant and obvious animal exploitation. It is taking something from an animal in order to make a product, aren't we supposed to be against this? How can we boldly say that we SUPPORT this and ask people to donate money??? With Veganism however, we completely end animal exploitation.
Wait so how do we help??
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