I've been a and enthusiast for a couple of years now. If you've never heard of cultivated meat, my on the fantastic book Meat Planet will get you caught up.
The TLDR is we've found a way to grow meat without killing animals. You can see why this might be intriguing.
At fifteen I read , , and in quick succession. That was sadly the end of enjoying .
In the 14 years since, I've maintained various levels of Really Bad veganism. Which is the state of knowing all the facts, understanding their moral implications, and still only making the "right choice" about 82% of the time.
Because here's the thing; , individuals voluntarily choosing to be vegan, and/or putting enourmous effort into convincing other people into veganism is a terrible game plan for addressing the complex, wide-ranging problems of animal agriculture:
Rather than judgementally guilt-tripping people into making hard sacrifices, exploring alternative ways of making meat (and meat-alternatives that aren't sad lumps of tofurkey) feels like a better use of everyone's time.
The thriving industry of cultured meat and cellular agriculture agrees. Research organisations like the and have been promoting, funding, and supporting new companies in this space over the last few years.
Keen to get involved, I talked my way into sketchnoting the 2019 at the MIT Media Lab.
Illustrated notes from the New Harvest 2019 Conference
The conference work led to a new initiative with New Harvest; illustrating a series of podcast episodes around their impressive community of .
The interviewed each research fellow. For each episode I made a one-shot illustrated summary that explains their research focus.