I just finished the Clean Meat book, and I found the closing chapter on the psychology of meat consumption the most fascinating. It explains why vegetarians have been roughly the same percentage of the population for 30 years now, and why we should not expect continued evangelism and “education” to start converting the unconverted, unless something else changes. I think the availability of economically-attractive meat without animal suffering will be that change. I’ll share some of the research results and my own personal journey as a meat eater in remission.
Summary: We rationalize the cognitive dissonance of how we generally empathize with animal welfare (in wild animals, pets, laboratory animals) versus that special subset of animals we regard as food. For those animals we eat — wherever we draw the line (fish, chicken, red meat) — we discount the intelligence of edible animals and imagine that they do not suffer in their growth and harvesting. (I looked up the original research and posted excerpts below).
For the first time, I can see my rationalizations shifting. I can also see the contradictory thoughts in myself more clearly as I slowly change the foods that I eat, marching down the neuron-count in the karmic hierarchy of edible life forms (a framework from Todd).
Five years ago, it was obvious to me that I would eat fish but not dolphin if it were a food. Dolphins are just too smart. A couple years ago, Genevieve and I stopped eating octopus for the same reason. As for mainstream meat, I could see how my future self would condemn my present self, and yet, I could not make a change, not even a little bit, like “meatless Mondays.” I continued to eat meat at almost every meal.
But now I will be giving up red meat, and I can feel myself becoming more open minded to the suffering of pigs and cows, something I could not quite face head on before.
How did I make a change? It was in a dare to a life-long smoker — if she gave up all nicotine for 6 months, I would give up meat. I did it for her. I was willing to make this great sacrifice to hopefully rid her of a deep addiction. I don’t think I would have done it for myself (before slaughter-free alternatives were widely available).
And my meatless experiment was fascinating. I first noticed how my deeply-held beliefs of how hard this would be were dead wrong. Food tastes great. I have plenty of variety. I feel full between meals and have plenty of energy. It did not matter that vegetarian friends have been saying this for years; I could not internalize the logic or their happy existence proofs — I assumed giving up meat for 6 months was going to be the toughest thing I ever did.
And then a more subtle realization dawned on me — I was receptive to the social media rants of vegetarian friends and articles on animal welfare. In the past, I would look past them. I would not lean in, and I did not internalize their messages.
Most of us ignore the vegetarian prophets. The annoyance of their strident messages should be a clue as it triggers something we do not like in ourselves, that we want to shelter from scrutiny. Ignorance is our bliss.
I know that I will give up slaughtered chicken next when Memphis Meats grows clean meat without the animal. And then fish. Invertebrates like crabs and lobster will be the last to go (P.S. when other groups adjudicated on animal welfare and their capacity to suffer, it is interesting that both the lab research laws and the NAR rules for living payloads in hobby rockets draw the line at invertebrates — you can do whatever you want with them).
My thoughts and beliefs followed my actions, not the other way around.
This reminded me of a recent podcast with Adam Grant: “there’s all this research on behavioral integrity, which says that you’re basically supposed to practice what you preach. And I have been wondering lately if we’ve got that backward. And if, instead, what we should be doing is only preaching things that we already practice?”
The morality of animal welfare will likely lag the economic shift, just as it did with slavery and whale-hunting for blubber. After kerosene provided an economic alternative, we advanced our morality and outlawed whale hunting. The fifth-largest industry in America was quickly decimated, and our moral outrage followed.
This is why clean meat will be so catalytic to change. In 2012, I wrote a FB post about my investment thesis and the search for a cellular ag company that can scale (long before the founding of Memphis Meats or my investment in them):
“I believe that in a few years we will look back and marvel at the barbarism and stunning environmental waste of meat harvesting today.
Our circle of empathy generally expands over time, but sometimes as a retrospective rationalization. We don’t typically discuss the meat industry in polite conversations because we don’t want to face the inevitable cognitive dissonance (because bacon tastes so good). We don’t really want to know why USDA meat inspectors become vegetarian.
I think all of that will change when viable meat products are grown from cell cultures, not in the field. We will switch, and marvel at our former selves.”
The vegetarian preachers tried, for 30 years now. Once we change our practices, we can finally hear their pleas and join them, preaching what we practice.
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