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Would 'fake' meat change the dynamics of people's religious and ethical objections? [1]

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Date: 2023-04-10  

Impossible Pork Char Siu Buns, which uses a plant-based substitute for ground pork that promises the flavor and texture of pork with far less of an environmental impact. It’s also gluten-free and aimed at kosher/halal certifications.

After this past Easter Sunday, I thought this might be an interesting topic for discussion given the fact that most of the Abrahamic religions on the planet have some form of dietary restrictions occurring this month. For Islam, we are currently in the month of Ramadan where Muslims fast from dawn to sunset. Judaism has the customs of Passover. Many Catholics just spent Good Friday abstaining from meat as part of Lent fasting rules.

Interesting to note, in the 17th century the Catholic Church declared that beavers were technically not considered meat because they lived most of their lives in water, making them closer to fish (which is not considered meat for Church doctrine). This same principle of land animals being considered meat, and aquatic-based animals being “fish” is applied to both capybara (a large rodent that can best be described as a giant guinea pig) and alligators, as technically consumption of either circumvents the meat restriction as well.

On the other side of things, there is a principle called “Marit ayin” within Jewish religious law. To describe it succinctly, even if something is not technically prohibited, it can become prohibited if the consumption of a food is confusing to other Jews and gives the appearance of violating chametz foods (i.e., foods with leavening agents that are forbidden for Passover). It’s for this reason the world’s largest kosher certifier, the Orthodox Union, refused to certify impossible pork, even thought the product’s ingredients was plant-based and contained nothing from a pig. This would presumably also apply to the idea of grown laboratory meat where meat is grown from an animal’s stem cells without slaughtering or harming the source.

If all of this sounds incredibly arbitrarily and like we’re dancing on the head of a pin, the impetus for thinking about this was the latest season of Star Trek: Picard and the idea with Trek’s replicator. It’s been a staple of Star Trek technology over the past 30 years, but It’s a good thought experiment and creates huge implications for something like this concept.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/10/2163058/-Would-fake-meat-change-the-dynamics-of-people-s-religious-and-ethical-objections

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