ABSTRACT
This chapter contends that producing meat in vitro constitutes moral progress. The arguments begin with the assumption, based on available empirical evidence, that human beings are not likely to stop consuming meat anytime soon. If this is the case, significant consequences of two main types follow. First, there are consequences involving animal welfare. Animals suffer in factory farms. The sooner this mass-scale suffering can stop, the better. The second category concerns the environment. Industrial animal agriculture produces greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. These emissions would be greatly reduced if we produced meat in vitro. Animal agriculture also pollutes the environment in other ways. The severity of these problems could be greatly reduced if we produced meat in vitro. The concept of edibility has historically always had a moral component. This chapter advances the thesis that our understanding of edibility as a moral notion is tied to the moral features that consuming a particular thing typically has. One noteworthy feature of the in vitro meat movement is that it can sever the notion of edibility from the features that make it a moral concept. When flesh is grown in a lab rather than in an animal, it is no longer morally problematic to say that some sentient beings are edible.
