“We want food to be delicious, diverse, healthy, affordable, sufficient for everyone, environmentally sustainable, good for animal welfare, from farms that make the countryside more attractive and use as few chemicals as possible. Many of these values are in conflict with one another for much of the time. For example, ugly fields covered with polytunnels can produce tasteless but plentiful, cheap, environmentally friendly and nutritious vegetables. The tastiest, most cow-friendly outdoor reared beef is too expensive to feed the majority, and can produce more greenhouse gasses and use more land than that from intensively reared cattle. There are some crops for which yields are so much better if grown non-organically that it makes no rational sense to avoid using pesticides and herbicides that are well within safe levels. IVM is just the most recent, vivid example of how our desire for the natural, traditional and aesthetically appealing food can clash with the value we place on animal welfare, environmental sustainability and the humane imperative to feed the whole world well.

Almost all the coverage of IVM has glossed over this pluralism, presenting commentators as either for or against, period. Perhaps that’s because balancing competing goods on a case-by-case basis is difficult, and we’d much prefer the simplicity of arranging them in a hierarchy, so that we always know what trumps what. It’s just too hard to accept that sometimes two things we highly prize, such as animal welfare and conservation, can pull in different directions. We easily fall prey to the philosophical myth that the good is unitary and whole, rather than plural and fragmented.”

– http://www.aeonmagazine.com/nature-and-cosmos/in-vitro-meat-demands-a-whole-new-food-ethics/