CULTURED MEAT AND CHANGING RURAL AREAS

Title: Cultured meat and changing rural areasNiko Räty, Hanna Tuomisto & Toni RyynänenUniversity of HelsinkiCorresponding: [email protected] population growth, climate change and current livestock production creates “wickedproblems” (Rittel & Webber, 1973) that change the food production systems. Novel foodproduction technologies like cellular agriculture, where agricultural products aremanufactured utilizing cell culturing techniques are essential in trying to solve these problems(Tuomisto & Teixeira de Mattos, 2011). These novel solutions, like cultured meat, challengefarmers to evaluate the possibilities and challenges they offer.An objective of this abstract is to study what kind of changes these novel technologies wouldbring to the rural areas (Cor van der Weele & Tramper, 2014). A research about the impact ofcultured meat on rural areas practically is non‐existent. We aim at building a future scenarioto understand possible changes. The future food production technologies are based on moraland ethical values that have not been collectively defined. What is the function of the farmanimals in our food production if the cellular agriculture replaces animals?Cellular agriculture is free from restricting factors like, growing seasons, production is notplace‐bound, and it could improve the environmental sustainability and the overall resilienceof the future food system. Furthermore, to support this development the traditional and novelfood production methods could utilize an advanced symbiotic relationship: solutions thatcombine farming, clean energy production and cellular agriculture (Tuomisto, 2018).Change in the food systems has influence on the economics by creating new jobs in cell linemanagement, production, and infrastructure, which will have regional impacts on rural areas.The essential question is how to prepare the food production system for changes that culturedmeat brings? What are the requirements for the farmers of the future and how these noveltechnologies will impact to the regional change in societal, regional and local levels?ReferencesCor van der Weele, C., & Tramper, J. (2014). Cultured meat: every village its own factory? Trends inBiotechnology, 32(6), 294–296. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tibtech.2014.04.009Rittel, H. W. J., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning. Policy Sciences, 4(2), 155–169.Tuomisto, H. (2018, October 16). Life cycle assessment of cellular agriculture combined with agroecologicalsymbiosis. Presented at the International Conference on Life Cycle Assessment of Food, Bangkok, Thailand.Tuomisto, H. L., & Teixeira de Mattos, M. J. (2011). Environmental Impacts of Cultured Meat Production.Environmental Science & Technology, 45(14), 6117–6123. https://doi.org/10.1021/es200130uI