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An Emerging Technology Assessment of Factory-Grown Food By View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ASU Digital Repository An Emerging Technology Assessment of Factory-Grown Food by Carolyn Sue Mattick A Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Approved December 2013 by the Graduate Supervisory Committee: Braden R. Allenby, Chair Amy E. Landis Jameson M. Wetmore ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY May 2014 ABSTRACT In vitro, or cultured, meat refers to edible skeletal muscle and fat tissue grown from animal stem cells in a laboratory or factory. It is essentially meat that does not require an animal to be killed. Although it is still in the research phase of development, claims of its potential benefits range from reducing the environmental impacts of food production to improving human health. However, technologies powerful enough to address such significant challenges often come with unintended consequences and a host of costs and benefits that seldom accrue to the same actors. In extreme cases, they can even be destabilizing to social, institutional, economic, and cultural systems. This investigation explores the sustainability implications of cultured meat before commercial facilities are established, unintended consequences are realized, and undesirable effects become reified and locked in. The study utilizes expert focus groups to explore the social implications, life cycle analysis to project the environmental implications, and economic input-output assessment to explore tradeoffs between conventionally-produced meat and factory-grown food products. The results suggest that, should cultured meat be widely adopted by consumers, food is likely to be increasingly a product of human design, perhaps becoming integrated into existing human institutions such as health care delivery and education. Environmentally, cultured meat could require smaller quantities of agricultural inputs and land than livestock. However, those avoided costs could come at the expense of more intensive energy use as biological processes are replaced with industrial systems. Finally, the research found that, since livestock production is a driver of significant economic activity, shifting away from traditional meat production in favor of cultured meat production could result in a net economic contraction. i DEDICATION For my family: generations past, present, and future ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To paraphrase a fellow student at Arizona State University, I always knew I wanted a PhD, but I didn’t fully understand what that meant. My time at ASU has been both intellectually and personally challenging and transformative. It is not an experience I would trade for anything, but it took time and attention away from the most important person in my life, Zachary Hughes. So I would like to thank him for his patience, understanding, support, and extraordinary willingness to read draft manuscripts. He is the best man I know. I would also like to express deep gratitude to my advisor and committee chair, Braden Allenby, without whom this research and degree would not have been possible. Words cannot express the positive influence he has had on me and other students. It has been an honor and privilege to watch every semester as he shows students a larger and more interesting world. The world is without a doubt a far better place for his presence in it. He is a better mentor, teacher, and role model I could have hoped for. I will continue to aspire to his example. Amy Landis and Jameson Wetmore (listed in alphabetical order) completed the ideal committee for this dissertation project. Amy always asked just the right question at the right time and pointed me toward significant insights. She also expressed confidence in the work when I needed it most. Jamey not only contributed significant time, skill, talent, and commitment to the project, but was consistently optimistic as well. He repeatedly inspired me to keep going when I least wanted to. Thank you both for saying yes. iii A number of other people contributed to the success of the project in other ways. In particular, Nicholas Genovese provided key information for the life cycle analysis, patiently answered endless questions via Skype, and provided invaluable feedback on articles meant for publication. Sincere thanks also go to the multi-talented Lori Hidinger who generously introduced me to a few ranchers who turned out to be some of the smartest and most interesting people I’ve ever met. And to those smart, interesting people, thank you for taking the time to share your wisdom and knowledge of ranching. Thank you also to the 23 brilliant scholars who generously donated their valuable time, knowledge, and creativity to the factory meat workshops. You know who you are. Finally, special gratitude goes to the people and organizations that funded this endeavor. They include the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment in general, but specifically for its support of CEE 181 and its teaching assistants. Once again, Brad deserves credit for his brilliant construction of this course that allowed me to undertake a PhD in the first place. The social assessment portion of the research was funded by the generous support of the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics. It was an honor to be named Lincoln Graduate Fellow in Emerging Technologies. The spirit of excellence and service demonstrated by everyone there was inspirational, but I want to specifically acknowledge Kelly O’Brien for being so enthusiastic and supportive of this project. Last but not least, heartfelt thanks go to the Graduate College at Arizona State University. Their dissertation fellowship allowed me the time and space to not only finish this research, but to learn how to be an academic. I am sure they could quantify the total cost of the fellowship, but believe when I say it was priceless. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................... xiii LIST OF FIGURES ......................................................................................................... xvi CHAPTER 1 THE UNINTENDED ANTHROPOCENE ..............................................................1 Context and Motivation .....................................................................................2 Vision .................................................................................................................4 2 CULTURED MEAT ................................................................................................5 Literature Review...............................................................................................5 Social implications. ......................................................................................6 Environmental Implications. ........................................................................7 Economic Implications. ...............................................................................7 Needs Analysis: Implications of Cultured Meat ................................................8 3 METHODS ..............................................................................................................9 Life Cycle Analysis............................................................................................9 Economic Input-Output Assessment ................................................................10 Technology Assessment ...................................................................................10 Scenarios ..........................................................................................................11 Earth Systems Engineering and Management .................................................11 Goals and Objectives .......................................................................................12 Research Methods ............................................................................................13 Cultured meat transition scenarios. ............................................................14 v CHAPTER Page Task 1a: Social framework: TA expert panels. ..........................................16 Task 1b: Environmental framework: LCA. ...............................................18 Task 1c: Economic framework: EIOA. .....................................................20 Task 2: Impact evaluation. .........................................................................21 Task 3: Development of metrics for ongoing monitoring. ........................21 Validation, Verification, and Uncertainty ........................................................22 Intellectual Merit ..............................................................................................23 4 SOCIAL ASSESSMENT.......................................................................................25 Introduction ......................................................................................................25 Cultured Meat ..................................................................................................27 Social Assessment Workshops ........................................................................28 Findings............................................................................................................30 Adoption and consumption decisions. .......................................................31 Cultural effects. ..........................................................................................33
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