Decryption | These Republicans against “woke” meat

(New York) A new front has opened in the culture wars that divide the United States: “woke” meat. Would you be surprised to learn that Ron DeSantis opposes it? He is not the only one to do so in the camp of Republican carnivores.

The word “woke” gives an idea of ​​the political dimension of a subject which is not strictly speaking. We are talking about laboratory-grown meat, also called cultured meat or cell-based meat (not to be confused with so-called plant-based meat).

This is what its promoters consider to be the food of the future: meat derived from animal cells which are placed in giant culture media called bioreactors to encourage their multiplication. The result of the process is a product that has the smell, taste and, ideally, texture of beef, chicken or salmon, among others.

In the United States, this industry is still in its infancy. In June 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture authorized the production and sale of cell-based chicken by two companies: Upside Foods and Food Meat. For a time, restaurants in San Francisco and Washington offered their customers products from these companies.

This was a very first step towards commercializing other lab-grown meats, with the aim of one day making them available in all good supermarkets and restaurants.

Proponents of lab-grown meat see many benefits, including for human health (reducing the risk of contamination by pathogenic bacteria), animal welfare (reducing large-scale slaughter), and the future of the planet (reduction in agricultural pollution and greenhouse gas emissions).

There are obviously downsides. The texture of lab-grown meat is still not optimal, especially for good old steak. Laboratories are energy intensive. And the costs are still high.

But investors, including Bill Gates and food giants Cargill and Tyson Foods, are there.

Bill Gates, fake meat and Nuremberg

But even before this industry really takes off, some red states are rearing up. Both houses of the Florida Parliament adopted a bill last March intended to criminalize the sale, manufacturing or distribution of meat grown in a laboratory. According to the text, violators will be liable to a fine of up to $500 and imprisonment for 60 days.

All this in a state governed by a party – Ronald Reagan’s Grand Old Party (GOP) – which has already made free enterprise one of its supreme values.

All that is missing is the signature of Ron DeSantis for the text to become law. The Republican governor has already signaled his detestation of cell-based meat.

“We’re not going to have fake meat. This doesn’t work,” he decided last February before denouncing “an entire ideological program which attacks many important elements of our society.” Since the word “woke” is often associated with the ideological agenda that Ron DeSantis is fighting against, some media outlets have used it to label lab-grown meat.

Hot on the heels of Florida, three other GOP-dominated states – Alabama, Arizona and Tennessee – are considering bills aimed at nipping the meat industry in the bud cellular. After an initial failure, Texas could get back on track.

The promoters of the Tennessee text are not laughing. They want to fine anyone selling cultured meat in their state $1 million. If the fine is steep, the debate surrounding this issue is no less so.

“Some people would probably like to eat bugs with Bill Gates, but not me,” said Republican Rep. Bud Hulsey of Tennessee, who also based his opposition to cell-based meat on the Nuremberg Code, adopted after World War II in response to medical experiments carried out by the Nazis on human beings.

God’s meat

In Florida, state Rep. Dean Black, himself a cattle rancher, gave a religious dimension to his opposition. “Cultured meat is not meat!” “, he thundered during a debate in the chamber. “It is man-made. Real meat is made by God himself. »

He added: “If you really want to try nitrogen-based protein dough, go to California. »

It goes without saying that the State of California is investing in cell-based meat.

It is also understood that opponents of cultured meat are under pressure from the influential livestock lobby.

But their disagreement is also both theatrical and identity-related. In American politics, the expression “throwing red meat” is often used to describe demagogic or inflammatory comments from tribunes wishing to inflame passions or generate support.

However, in the case that interests us, it is not just a metaphor.

“For some Republican politicians, this is a strategy that motivates, particularly right-wing male voters, to think that their way of life is under threat,” explains to The Press Sparsha Saha, lecturer at Harvard University and the only empirical political scientist studying the politics of meat.

“We know that masculine norms correspond to conservative norms. And conservative norms correlate with attachment to meat. The researchers’ experiments show that when meat consumption is threatened, men feel like their masculinity is threatened. »

Would this explain the photos of large steaks on the grill that some men post on social networks in order to shut up the so-called “wokes”?