A new public information campaign against cultivated—or “lab-grown”—meat is being run by a group with close links to a controversial public relations firm. The group has launched TV adverts and a website purportedly to educate the public about cultivated meat, but its approach—which draws on a PR playbook previously used to discredit the plant-based meat industry—has been criticized by supporters of the cultivated meat industry who claim these campaigns are deceptive and unscientific.
The campaign was launched in 2023 by the Center for the Environment and Welfare (CEW)—a group led by executive director Jack Hubbard, who is also a partner at public relations firm Berman and Company, which has a long history of supporting nonprofits that defend the interests of the food and drink industry.
One advert that ran on Fox News features some cultivated meat being presented at a fictional school science fair by a child, who says that the cells “grow like a tumor” and are “bath[ed] with chemicals.” CEW has also set up a website that compares the cells used to grow cultivated meat with tumor cells, drawing heavily from an article published by Bloomberg Businessweek in February 2023 that raised fears about immortalized cells.
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[Good Food Institute Vice President Jessica] Almy says that the suggestion that ingesting immortalized cells could be linked to cancer in humans was “so ludicrous as to be laughable.” “So few people have had cultivated meat or have access to it that it feels like these things that are being raised are more fearmongering than anything else,” she says.
