Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore the imaginaries and visions of different innovators and stakeholders of in vitro meat on the basis of semi-structured interviews.

Paper long abstract:

In vitro meat has recently gained media and some public attention, especially after the launch of the first burger made entirely of bovine stem cells in 2013 and the late-breaking announcement of cultured meat balls in January 2016. The basic idea of IVM is to produce meat from muscle cells grown in cell culture. IVM is presented by the innovators as one of the most important solutions for shaping a sustainable future of food: It could reduce greenhouse gas emissions, land and water use and could be healthy and animal-friendly (cf. Bhat et al. 2015).

Innovators, artists and social scientists imagine a concrete future with IVM: a 3D-printer in a restaurant, a bioreactor in every household, a pig in the backyard which serves as stem cell donor; and the overall idea of a post-animal bioeconomy, the "reinvention of the way of producing animal products" (cf. New Harvest). Visions of in vitro meat influence the actual debate about sustainable food, although they struggle to be included in broader food policies mainly because of the lack of public and political awareness of the negative impacts of meat production and consumption (cf. Wellesley et al. 2015). In our project, dedicated to explore visions of in vitro meat, we performed interviews with different stakeholders involved in this innovation. In our talk we will present the results of these semi-structured interviews and we will try to show how different visions of what in vitro meat is and what it could be concretely shape the development of this innovation.