Dear Editor,
These days, in the face of a rising fascist threat, it is easy to lose sight of other political issues, such as the violence we inflict on animals. We can’t allow this to happen. Humans kill more than a trillion aquatic and land creatures every year for food. To put this figure in a little perspective, only about 117 billion humans have ever lived, according to the Population Reference Bureau. It’s no exaggeration to say our exploitation of animals causes more suffering and premature death than any human conflict, injustice or disease ever has. In my view, the most promising
long-term method of reducing such evil is a massive investment of public funding into cultivated-meat research. For those who don’t know, cultivated meat is grown from livestock cells, without slaughter. Even low adoption rates of the new protein would do tremendous good. Unfortunately, cultivated meat is currently too expensive to mass produce. Compassionate politicians should help accelerate the development of cellular agriculture, so these technological hurdles can be overcome as quickly as possible.
Jon Hochschartner Granby, CT