Alex Hershaft, animal activist and Holocaust survivor, discusses cellular agriculture
Alex Hershaft is the founder of Farm Animal Rights Movement and a Holocaust survivor. I recently had the opportunity to interview him about cultivated meat. If you would like to be interviewed or write something for Slaughter Free America, email JonHoch87@gmail.com.
SLAUGHTER-FREE AMERICA: When and how did you first learn about cultivated meat?
ALEX HERSHAFT: About a year ago, from Paul Shapiro [author of ‘Clean Meat.’]
SFA: Once cultivated meat is cheaper than and indistinguishable or superior in taste to slaughtered meat, what sort of impact might it have on traditional agriculture?
AH: I think that cultivated meat will have a huge impact, eventually wiping out industrial meat production from live animals.
SFA: What would you say to animal activists who are opposed to cultivated meat?
AH: I would remind them that they are in this struggle for the animals, and anything that reduces the number of animals who are oppressed and killed for food should be supported.
SFA: Would you eat cultivated meat, or is it just something you want available for others?
AH: I am very unlikely to eat cultivated meat myself, as I feel no need for it after 60 year of abstaining.
SFA: Do you think activists should expend energy and resources to help advance cellular agriculture, by pushing for more government funding for cultivated-meat research?
AH: Yes I do. Plant-based meat and dairy products are more likely to be widely available sooner, but some people will continue to hold out for "the real thing" that cultivated meat can provide.