Advanced
Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.
Title details for Meat Planet by Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft - Available

Meat Planet

Artificial Flesh and the Future of Food

by Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft
Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
1 of 1 copy available
Meat Planet explores the quest to generate meat in the lab—a substance sometimes called "cultured meat"—and asks what it means to imagine that this is the future of food.

Neither an advocate nor a critic of cultured meat, Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft spent five years researching the phenomenon. In Meat Planet, he reveals how debates about lab-grown meat reach beyond debates about food, examining the links between appetite, growth, and capitalism. Could satiating the growing appetite for meat actually lead to our undoing? Are we simply using one technology to undo the damage caused by another? Like all problems in our food system, the meat problem is not merely a problem of production. It is intrinsically social and political, and it demands that we examine questions of justice and desirable modes of living in a shared and finite world.

Benjamin Wurgaft tells a story that could utterly transform the way we think of animals, the way we relate to farmland, the way we use water, and the way we think about population and our fragile ecosystem's capacity to sustain life. He argues that even if cultured meat does not "succeed," it functions—much like science fiction—as a crucial mirror that we can hold up to our contemporary fleshy dysfunctions.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    December 19, 2019

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781494540531
      • File size: 292045 KB
      • Duration: 10:08:25

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Author and narrator Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft has researched many of the questions and philosophies surrounding meat and its future. The audiobook flows in a stream-of-consciousness style, though Wurgaft's no-nonsense tone may make listeners feel like they are in a college lecture hall. Thoroughly investigating the topic of "cultured meat," Wurgaft objectively reviews the facts, opinions, morals, and science of producing meat in the future. Listeners who are looking for an introduction to the dilemma of whether or not to eat meat derived from animals will enjoy hearing this relatively short audiobook and may wish to jot down key takeaways for further investigation and reflection. S.K.G. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      September 30, 2019
      Historian Wurgaft (Thinking in Public: Strauss, Levinas, Arendt) expertly details the five years he spent, beginning in 2013, researching the emerging industry of producing meat from cultured tissues rather than from live animals. After observing the world’s first laboratory-created hamburger, developed in 2013 by a Dutch scientist, he undertakes a worldwide investigation into the future of artificial meat. Wurgaft becomes “a kind of anthropological field worker,” visiting and interviewing scientists and businesspeople in start-ups in New York, California, and Israel. Throughout, he uses cultured meat as a lens into how technology changes the world. Wurgaft describes how the various planned technologies will work (“a vision of cultured animal products being produced not through slaughter and butchery, but in sterile, sleek facilities that look a bit like breweries”), the roadblocks to its production, and ethical questions “about the implications cultured meat may hold for our moral regard for animals.” Wurgaft’s investigation into cellular-grown meat’s various industrial and cultural issues should stand as an essential introduction to the subject.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Loading