Could negative partisanship benefit cultivated meat?
This has been a tough time for cellular agriculture. For those who don’t know, the field seeks to produce animal-sourced food from cell culture. Journalists have shown the biggest private companies seem to be over-promising and under-delivering. In my view, this makes the case for publicly-funded research, which isn’t seeking an immediate return on investment, more compelling. But as the kids say, the vibes aren’t great.
Perhaps more concerning is the way cultivated meat has been drawn into the culture war by conservatives. For instance, Politico recently ran a story about a Florida state representative who wants to ban sales of the new protein. “Farming and cattle are incredibly important industries to Florida,” the Republican Tyler Sirois said. “So I think this is a very relevant discussion for our state to have.”
Florida’s agricultural commissioner, Wilton Simpson, who is a factory farmer by trade, supports the effort. “Without this legislation, untested, potentially unsafe, and nearly unregulated laboratory produced meat could be made available,” he said in a statement packed with falsehoods. After a rigorous process, cultivated meat was approved for sale by the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture.
I’ve previously said this backlash was inevitable. You can’t hope for significant change without expecting resistance. Ideally, everyone would agree animal agriculture needs to be replaced for a host of animal welfare, public health and environmental reasons. However, that’s not the world we live in. Political struggle was always going to be required. What follows is an attempt to find a small positive in a larger development that — while unavoidable — is negative.
That said, is it possible Republican opposition to cellular agriculture could lead to an increase in Democratic awareness and support for cultivated meat? To answer this question, we need to understand the concept of negative partisanship. The idea is pretty simple. In short, if your political opponents oppose something, you’re more likely to approve of it and vice versa.
For instance, the position of mainstream Democrats on the issue of immigration became far more left-wing during the presidency of Donald Trump. Candidates who previously wanted to expand deportations, like Kirsten Gillibrand, were calling for the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Such candidates were responding to a change in perspective by their base.
What caused this change? Well, partly it can be explained by negative partisanship. The Democratic base rightly loathed Trump, who was taking a harsh line on immigration, and left-of-center voters didn’t want anything to do with his policies. But when Trump left office and President Joe Biden retained aspects of his approach, the outrage died down. The base’s view seemed less ideological than partisan.
Similarly, could Republican opposition to cellular agriculture lead to an increase in Democratic interest and support for cultivated meat? I certainly hope so and I actually think it’s plausible to a limited extent. Lord knows the alternative-protein sector could use some good news as the downsides of privately-funded research become clear and conservatives drag cellular agriculture into the culture war.