More than almost anything else we put into our mouthsrby63, meat matters. What flesh we eat — or forsake — tells the world who we are, what class and caste we belong to, what gods we believe in. Halal or kosher. Pure-veg or paleo. Hormel or farmers’ market.

Worldwide, 80 billion animals are slaughtered every year for meat. Raising all those animals has already claimed most of the world’s farmland. It has led to zoonotic diseases and vast deforestation. It has polluted air and water and spewed planet-heating gasses into the atmosphere.

It has also enabled many more people to eat meat more often than ever before, which has in turn put pressure on governments to both keep meat prices affordable and reduce its climate hoofprint.

What will all of this mean for the $1 trillion global meat industry?

A new kind of factory farming is on the horizon, one that grows meat in giant steel vats, either from real-live cells taken from real-live animals or from tiny microorganisms.

This new industry has many names — lab meat, cellular meat, cultivated meat, precision fermentation. I think of it as chicken without wings.

Its fans praise its extreme efficiency: feet, tails, feathers, snouts are eliminated. Its detractors say it’s a threat to culture and livelihoods. To some people, it’s just uncanny, or maybe it’s just the natural next step in how uncannily the modern food system has denatured meat.

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