Cultured meat in post-animal bioeconomy – changing relationships between humans and farmed animals

The project explores critically the possibilities and challenges of post-animal bioeconomy and cel-lular agriculture (i.e. producing agricultural products by using cell-culturing technologies) by antici-pating prospective futures and conditions for their realisation. Starting point of the project is a vi-sion for the post-animal bioeconomy: novel food technologies, such as production of cell-cultured meat and plant-based meat substitutes, will give rise to a new food system. The working hypothe-sis is that conversion from the traditional food chains to novel food systems will result in tensions, unexpected challenges and novel possibilities that ultimately change the relationships between humans and farmed animals.

The project will address novel post-animal bioeconomy from the perspectives of
1) societal meanings and the changing relationships between humans and farmed animals, and
2) technological and environmental impacts of replacing livestock production with novel food systems and how these development courses transform the roles of farmed animals.

The project is funded by the Kone Foundation.