Is this meat after all?

Novel food technologies and conceptual change

Abstract

 The supposedly shared understanding of what meat is has been undermined by the appearance of foodstuffs that claim to be meat even though they are derived from vegetable sources (plant-based meats) or are produced by cultivating animal cells in vitro (cultivated meat). After introducing the actors partaking in the negotiation over which foods can legitimately be called ‘meat’ – and demonstrating that the crux of this dispute is ontological rather than merely linguistic – the divergent concepts of “meat” that arise in this debate are analysed to elucidate their respective strengths and weaknesses. Subsequently, it is proposed that meat could be interpreted as an artefact represented by a functional concept apt at incorporating plant-based and cultivated meat into its content. Lastly, by examining this operation through the lens of conceptual engineering, the functional understanding of meat is presented as an epistemic, or even potentially semantic, amelioration of the concept of “meat”.