Call for chapters for an edited book tentatively titled:

 Against Cultured Meat 

To be edited by Nathan Poirier and Richard Giles

Submit ideas here: https://forms.gle/BvhVZAoMM9uEYwa48

Global animal product consumption, its attendant global warming and climate destabilization, and the numbers of animals farmed for food continue to rise despite a several year stretch where alternative animal products also gained some popularity (Twine 2024). Numerous techniques have been made against cultured (cultivated/clean/cell-based) meat which has been proposed as a way to address or even eliminate these problems. Critiques of this technology are not new and have mounted, but much more can still be said. Existing critical writings are spread out across time, published as individual chapters in edited books, or scattered around the internet through popular media sources. While the number of books dedicated to alternative animal products have proliferated since Paul Shapiro’s Clean Meat: How Growing Meat without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World in 2018, there is still no single volume dedicated to critiquing cell-based meat. Existing books (authored or edited), some of which do contain critical elements, tend to be either of the popular, journalistic variety, contain cultured meat as only a part of the overall book, or are overall clearly in support of the technology. However, with rising consolidation of corporations with and around state interests, and concomitant decrease in both social and ecological diversity arising from this partnership (Hornborg 2025), a full-length critical work against cultured meat seems especially important.

“Inside” interest in cultured meat is waning, evidenced by declining investments and funders who are backing out. Thus, it could be easy for proponents to quietly exit the scene, to be let off “scot-free" without being held to account for the shake-up they brought to the table with minimal evidence and poor theorization. In essence, this book will catch them on their way out the door, and should cultured meat ever see a resurgence, due to biotech innovation, then this book will be there to challenge them if or when they try to come back. A book like this will also serve as a larger general case study for current and future tech innovations like AI.

This book seeks chapters that critique cultured meat from a variety of vantage points. The goal is to present as many counter-arguments as possible and collect them together to present a serious case against cultured meat. Chapters need not be against cultured meat in the absolute, or against all aspects of it, but we ask that the main thrust of submissions focus on critique. Part of critique also entails detailing alternatives to cultured meat, and chapters that do this are encouraged. We seek works that critique popular, academic, and professional (i.e., industry) representations and promotion of cultured meat. Academic and activist voices are sought. Shorter or longer works are welcome (see submission details below).

We will submit a book proposal to publishers once chapter selections are made. A tentative schedule is as follows: chapter abstract/summaries due by June 30; authors of accepted chapters by July 14 first drafts of chapter due by October 15. Drafts can be submitted before the deadline. Drafts will be edited on a rolling basis as they are submitted.

Any questions can be submitted through the Google Form link below or emailed to Nathan at poirinat1@gmail.com.

Depending on publisher, this book is planned to feature commissioned art for the cover from an as-yet unconfirmed independent artist.

To submit an abstract/summary, please use this Google Form: https://forms.gle/BvhVZAoMM9uEYwa48

Some suggested topics:

●      Relations between cell-based meat and other alternative animal products

●      Connecting cultured meat to the military-industrial complex

●      Non-animal dairy products

●      Environmental/ecological critiques

●      Animal liberation critiques

●      Health critiques (personal and/or public)

●      Social critiques

●      Vegan perspectives

●      Luddite arguments

●      financial/engineering/infrastructural  infeasibility

●      Case studies of particular outsized personalities, companies, or industry publications

●      Critiques of the state of existing literature on cultured meat

●      indigenous/anti-colonial critiques

●      Queer viewpoints

●      inconsistencies/contradictions in “industry” rhetoric vs behavior

●      Relations to other technologies or social justice movements

Submission details

Word length: 2000-6000 words, including references

Times New Roman font, 12-point

No footnotes or endnotes

Citation style: any for now. Will edit accordingly when a publisher is secured.

Google doc or Word document

Submit ideas here: https://forms.gle/BvhVZAoMM9uEYwa48

References

Hornborg, Alf. 2025. Liquidate: How Money is Dissolving the World. Oxon, UK: Routledge.

Shapiro, Paul. 2018. Clean Meat: How Growing Meat without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World. New York: Gallery Books.

Twine, Richard. 2024. The Climate Crisis and Other Animals. Sydney University Press.

About the Editors

Nathan Poirier received a doctorate in Sociology from Michigan State University in 2023 with a dissertation that empirically examined how multiple groups of social actors—activists, animal welfare scientists, and alternative animal product "industry" insiders—are reacting to and discussing cultured meat in terms of how they may help or hinder its development and “success.”. Since writing a master’s thesis critical of cultured meat in 2017, Nathan has published several critical publications on cultured meat in academic and activist journals, and as book chapters from a variety of perspectives.

Richard Giles received his doctorate in Social and Ecological Sustainability from the University of Waterloo’s School of Environment, Resources, and Sustainability. His dissertation focused on the theoretical and material implications of cultured meat, stemming from an ideological concern with animal life and the matter of liberation. Now working as an independent researcher, Richard is looking for employment in the academic realm while also trying to get his work published in various forms. When not focusing on these aspects of life, Richard engages in private animal rescue.

The 2025 Australasian Animal Studies Association (AASA) Conference, Centring Animals Across the Disciplines, asks us to pause, reorientate, and engage our imagination, intellect, and practice to place non-human animals at the centre.

What does the world look, feel, taste or sound like when we, as scholars, artists and activists, put animals at the centre of our engagement?

What critically informed insights emerge?

The 2025 AASA Conference will occur in person at the University of Southern Queensland’s beautiful Toowoomba campus from 5 – 7 November.

The Conference will offer a vibrant setting for conversations, projects, debates, and speculative futures, with the aim of identifying cross and trans-disciplinary synergies, and integrating First Nations knowledge in the interests of other species and the more than human world.

Deadline for Submissions is June 30, 2025. To see the call for papers, visit the AASA website.

Event description

Sociologists have long understood that the social world it not a solely rational place: it is messy, it is interactional and it is felt. Emotion management has a key role in supporting both work done to nonhuman animals (e.g. animal testing, fHarming, slaughter), and for nonhuman animals (e.g. activism, caretaking, critical animal research).

Increasing acknowledgement of the emotional and sensory experiences of nonhuman animals opens up exciting new avenues through which to better understand and challenge their exploitation. Here, methodological and theoretical innovation provides key resources for vegan sociologists to expand their toolkit.

In the 2025 meeting of the International Association of Vegan Sociologists we invite participants to consider how emotions and sensory experiences are integral to understanding and challenging nonhuman animal exploitation.

Potential topics include (but are not limited to):

• Nonhuman animals as minded, feeling beings: how are animals' emotions or sensory experiences minimised or acknowledged in society and/or vegan sociology research?

• Veganism, activism and emotional labour: How do activists navigate the emotions involved in advocating for other animals? What role does emotional labour play in vegan activism?

• Socialisation of emotions & animal exploitation: How are emotional norms or 'rules' around nonhuman animals socialised in ways that challenge or support vegan ways of being?

• Sensory experiences and the Body: how can vegan sociology help us to explore human and nonhuman animals' felt experiences of the social world?

• Vegan Sociological perspectives on particular emotions: e.g. how might explorations of disgust, desire, grief, joy, sadness further our work for nonhuman animals

• Innovative research methods for exploring sensory elements of the multispecies social world: e.g. Emotional/Sensory mapping, visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory methods

• Representations of nonhuman animal emotions: 'happy' exploited animals, suicide food, attempts to build empathy

• Digital emotions and online vegan communities

• Intersections of species, race, gender, and emotional politics

Visit the IAVS 2025 website for submission guidelines.

If you have any announcements related to a critical animal studies or animal activist event or publication that you’d like to have posted, please contact Chloë Taylor @ chloe3@ualberta.ca with the information.