“Meataphysics: Clean Meat, Messy Matter.”

Guest Speaker: Ricardo Simmonds, University of Colorado

Location: Lory Student Center, Room 312

Animal meat production and consumption (fish, pork, chicken, beef, foi gras) has long been a source of concern for philosophers, but new technologies make it possible to use animal stem cells to produce meat in laboratories, possibly avoiding many, if not most, ethical concerns. Some forecasters anticipate that such products may be readily available to consumers in the United States this year. The production of laboratory meat for human consumption, advertised as clean meat, gives rise to epistemic, moral and ontological questions about the nature of this new non-slaughtered animal product. In this talk, I explore the ontology of clean meat by examining the different philosophical implications of natural and unnatural in an ongoing set of discussions among religious communities. While several Jewish, Muslim and Christian scholars have drawn distinct, and at times contradicting, conclusions about the ontology of clean meat, I develop a Catholic position, based on Aristotelian hylomorphism, and borrowing concepts from other traditions, that challenges the conclusion that lab meat is meat in the first place.

Event contact: kenneth.shockley@colostate.edu