Jon Hochschartner
Anyone who cares about animals should oppose Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-Elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services. Available evidence suggests he would block the development of cultivated meat. For those who don’t know, the revolutionary protein is grown from livestock cells, without slaughter. Nothing has the potential to reduce more animal suffering and premature death.
The scale of human violence against our fellow creatures boggles the mind. We kill more than a trillion aquatic and land animals every year for food. To put that in a little perspective, only about 117 billion humans have ever lived, according to the Population Reference Bureau. When the nascent field of cellular agriculture is more fully developed, even low adoption rates of cultivated meat could save billions of creatures annually.
Unfortunately, the nominal opposition to the incoming fascist White House, the Democratic Party, is busy bowing and scraping, as they search for points of compromise with Trump. We see this lack of fighting spirit throughout the party’s ideological range. Even so called progressives, like California Representative Ro Khanna, are talking about how they might work with the made-up Department of Government Efficiency.
What this moment calls for is unwavering opposition to Trump and his cronies. We’ve already seen one of the president-elect’s nominees, former Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, who was initially chosen to serve as United States attorney general, forced to withdraw. They aren’t invulnerable. Kennedy, a bizarre, anti-vaccination conspiracy theorist, has a host of weaknesses Democrats should exploit to the fullest possible extent.
There are a great number of reasons to oppose his nomination. These include, as I’ve mentioned, the former Democrat’s hostility to cellular agriculture. In addition to the potential animal-welfare benefits of cultivated meat, the new protein could significantly reduce our greenhouse-gas emissions and pandemic risk. After all, livestock farming is a leading contributor to climate change and the spread of zoonotic viruses.
In October of 2021, Kennedy wrote on Facebook: “Lab grown meat offers private corporations the opportunity to place intellectual property rights on meat development and thus create a financial windfall, at the expense of human health.” Of course, there is no reason cellular agriculture needs to be the sole domain of private corporations. For instance, I’d love to see some type of public entity producing cultivated meat.
The health concerns Kennedy raises are bogus, like so much else the conspiracy theorist says. The protein has received regulatory approval from the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture. Unfortunately, if confirmed, Kennedy would oversee the former, which is why those who care about animal welfare and the development of this technology should be concerned about his nomination.
In a recent article for Heatmap News, a climate publication launched by former executives of The Week, Michael Grunwald reported a source close to Kennedy said it was unlikely the protein would be banned outright. Rather the potential cabinet secretary would leave industry players in permanent regularity limbo. Cultivated-meat companies have put on a brave face about the incoming administration, but it’s not very convincing.
Democratic leaders need to stop wallowing in their sense of fear and helplessness. It’s true; Trump will do tremendous damage to the country, which they won’t be able to prevent. However, there will be some very bad outcomes Democrats can stop, if they can get their act together. My hope is Kennedy’s nomination, which is controversial even amongst Republicans, will fall into this category, for the sake of animals and so much else.
Jon Hochschartner lives in Connecticut. He is the author of a number of books, including The Animals’ Freedom Fighter: A Biography of Ronnie Lee, Founder of the Animal Liberation Front. Visit his blog at SlaughterFreeAmerica.Substack.com.
