Article Evaluation on “The Vegan Carnivore?”

Article Evaluation on “The Vegan Carnivore?”

Julian Baggini’s article “The Vegan Carnivore?” examines the issue concerning laboratory grown meat: it makes humanity to redefine her morals about meat consumption, especially vegetarians and vegans. His article tackles the idea of in vitro meat (IVM)  replacing traditional (reared and slaughtered) meat, also it discusses ideology of vegetarianism, because (IVM) was produced without harming animals, yet most vegetarians would still refuse to even try it. His conclusion is that in the close future people will have to reach a point when both meat productions are accepted, because neither of them is good or bad. Technological dependency has its drawbacks just like farming has (for example greenhouse gas emission), and to have a balanced attitude to food we have to accept both.

The author is a British philosopher, a writer, and founding editor of The Philosopher’s Magazine, and his latest book, The Virtues of the Table was published in 2014. The topic discussed can be also found in articles in Time, National Geographic, and CNN beside many other websites, blogs, and journals.

Baggini’s idea on the topic is that the bucolic idea of placing back food industry to an early state, or to have IVM totally replacing traditional meat are both far-fetched. He spends a relatively long period in his article discussing how lab-grown meat tests the vegetarian community’s ideology. His point is that from the point of view of ethics and sustainability IVM should be welcomed by vegetarians, but as he examines this topic he presents us that au contraire: the attitude is still quite to same, except for some individual opinions. Thus it can be seen that vegetarianism’s main idea is not about not harming animals by eating their flesh, but to go back to a romantic agricultural state of not eating meat (or at least reducing it).

To back up his claims Baggini cites many sources: organizations, like Greenpeace or PETA, scientists, other philosophers, and authors. His sources are not listed by the end of the article, but they are quite appropriately referred to in the text. There are no logical fallacies in the article, the author examines the issue from all points of view: the point of view of Mark Post, who created in vitro meat, the consumers’ opinion on IVM (they found it to be ‘not juicy’ or not tasteful enough, because the lack of grease, otherwise it was said to be perfect), the counterparts’ opinion (Greenpeace, PETA, Vegetarian Society, etc.). Concerning the form, it is well-balanced: the paragraphs are of a similar length, and the segments discussing one particular issue are similar as well.

There is one thing in the article that I found out of place and did not really understand: that is right the first sentence of the second paragraph. It is the following: “Post (which rhymes with ‘lost’, not ‘ghost’) has been working on in vitro meat (IVM) since 2009.” The part in parentheses makes no sense, and cannot be related to any part of the article. It is like a joke, or a reference to the relationship between the author and the scientist, anyway, it should have been left out of an otherwise academic article.

All in all, “The Vegan Carnivore?” is an academic article going through thoroughly the question of cultured meat, exploring all ideas and opinions surrounding the issue. The conclusion is to find balance, and that neither total dependency on technology, nor an overly romanticised idea of going back centuries in time in agriculture is good, which I agree with.