5 Beliefs Cultivarians Hold About Animal Welfare
- David Bell
- Aug 3
- 10 min read
If meat can be made without killing animals, many Cultivarians think we should stop treating slaughter as the default. That is the core idea here.
In this piece, I’d sum the case up like this:
Animal welfare comes first
Meat and slaughter are not the same thing
Harm happens across the whole supply chain, not just at the abattoir
Sentient animals matter morally
Science can replace painful farming methods
Welfare claims should be checked, not just printed on a label
The article leans on a few clear facts. 85% of UK adults say we have a moral duty to spare animals avoidable pain, suffering and distress. It also points out that conventional meat production still depends on breeding, confinement, transport and slaughter at scale, while cultivated meat aims to make meat from animal cells instead.
For me, the main point is simple: Cultivarian thinking is not against meat; it is against making meat through avoidable animal harm. The five beliefs build that case from ethics, law, farming practice and labelling.
Owen Ensor's talking animals: Cultivated meat pioneer on welfare-washing and brand messaging
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Quick comparison
Point | Conventional meat | Cultivated meat |
Slaughter | Part of production | Aims to avoid routine slaughter |
Animal suffering | Can happen during rearing, transport and killing | Cuts out many of those harm points |
Use of animals | Billions bred and killed | Small donor animal input |
Painful procedures | Can include trimming, docking and castration | Relies on cell collection instead |
Welfare claims | Often unclear or voluntary | Should state cell source and animal inputs |
So if you want the short version, it’s this: Cultivarians see animal welfare as the main moral test for meat, considering the intergenerational ethics of meat production, and they think cultivated meat offers a way to cut suffering without giving meat up.
Why Animal Welfare Is Central to Cultivarian Thinking
Animal welfare sits at the heart of Cultivarian thinking because cultivated meat offers a way to cut harm without asking people to give up meat. Before looking at the five beliefs, it helps to get clear on the ethical ideas underneath them.
Sentience, harm reduction, and the case against avoidable suffering
Sentience means the ability to feel pain, fear, comfort and pleasure. That is why animals matter morally. As philosopher Peter Singer put it, sentience is "the capacity to suffer or experience enjoyment or happiness" [4]. Once you accept that farm animals are sentient, the ethical question changes. It is no longer only "are we feeding people?" but also "how much suffering does this system create, and is any of it avoidable?" For Cultivarians, the answer is plain: if suffering can be avoided, it should be.
That idea shows up in welfare standards that try to measure harm in day-to-day terms.
How the Five Freedoms shape animal welfare thinking
Freedom | What it means |
From hunger and thirst | Access to adequate food and water |
From discomfort | Appropriate shelter and environment |
From pain, injury, or disease | Prevention or rapid treatment |
To express normal behaviour | Sufficient space and social interaction |
From fear and distress | Conditions that avoid mental suffering |
Conventional livestock systems often struggle with the freedoms tied to normal behaviour, fear and distress. Animals kept in intensive conditions, moved to abattoirs, and put through slaughter lines face long periods of restriction and, at the end, acute fear and distress. That can happen even when legal welfare rules are followed.
The European Food Safety Authority identified 19 major welfare consequences for broiler chickens alone in current production systems, including bone lesions, locomotory disorders, and prolonged hunger [7]. In a comparison of cultivated and traditional meat, the former avoids most of these problems at the source by growing cells in controlled conditions.
Taken together, the Five Freedoms help explain why Cultivarians reject systems built around confinement, transport and slaughter.
Not anti-meat - against slaughter as the default
This is why Cultivarianism is not anti-meat. It is anti-slaughter. Cultivarians want meat to stay part of British food life - the Sunday roast, the steak, the slow-cooked lamb. What they reject is the idea that killing animals is the only path to those foods. If meat can be made without slaughter, then slaughter is no longer a requirement. It becomes a choice.
Those beliefs grow from one core idea: meat should not depend on killing animals.
1. Meat Should Not Require Animal Slaughter
Eating meat isn't the problem. Killing animals to make it is. Cultivarians draw a clear line between meat and slaughter. For them, the moral problem sits with the system behind meat production, which kills more than 80 billion land animals a year.[8][10]
Cultivated meat changes that setup. It starts with a small cell biopsy taken from a living animal. The procedure is minimally invasive and causes minimal harm. Those cells then go into a bioreactor, where they're fed nutrients and grown into muscle tissue over several weeks. The donor animal stays alive.
As David Bell, founder of The Cultivarian Society, puts it, the moral issue is slaughter, not meat itself.
That point matters because a single cell sample from one cow can, in theory, produce the equivalent of 175 million beef patties - without slaughtering the animal.[1]
Early forms of cultivated meat sometimes relied on foetal bovine serum, which comes from slaughter by-products. But animal-free growth media now remove that link.[2][11][12] In plain terms, the direction of travel is clear: meat production that does not depend on slaughter at any stage of the supply chain.
That moves the debate forward. It is no longer only about slaughter itself, but also about the harm that may still happen across the rest of the supply chain.
2. Reducing Suffering Matters Across the Whole Supply Chain
Animal suffering doesn't start at the abattoir. Slaughter is simply the last harm in a much longer chain.
That chain begins well before an animal reaches the slaughterhouse: with breeding choices, overcrowded housing, routine procedures done without enough pain relief, and long-distance transport in stressful conditions.
The UK data for 2025/26 make that plain. They record far more welfare breaches on farms and during transport than at slaughter: 596,445 versus 33,679.[13][14] This isn't a handful of bad cases. It's built into the system.
Transport shows the problem in plain terms. Animals are loaded onto vehicles, mixed with unfamiliar animals, and kept in transit for hours. During that time, they can face heat stress and dehydration.
Conditions on farms can be just as harsh. In intensive systems, broiler chickens may live for as little as 35 days - about 1.3% of their potential lifespan.[16] Routine procedures such as beak trimming, tail docking, and castration add more pain and distress. These aren't rare events at the edges of the system. They're standard parts of a model built for output, forcing consumers to weigh taste vs ethics in their food choices.
Cultivated meat cuts out the main sources of harm:
live transport
routine mutilations
slaughter
That's the change Cultivarians are arguing for. Not a small tweak to the current system, but a different model from the ground up. So their focus isn't on one moment at the end of the chain. It's on the whole production system.
3. Animals Are Sentient Beings With Moral Standing
Sentient animals have moral standing. They matter in their own right, not just as food. That idea has shaped animal welfare thinking for centuries.
Jeremy Bentham said it plainly more than two centuries ago, and his words still sit at the heart of modern animal welfare thinking:
Farmed animals - including cattle, pigs, chickens, sheep and fish - can feel pain, fear and stress.
The law reflects that view too. Article 13 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union formally recognises animals as "sentient beings" and requires institutions to pay "full regard" to animal welfare across key policy areas.[17][20][21] In the UK, polling shows that 71% of the British public believe it is never acceptable to cause pain and suffering to animals, and 84% say animal welfare is an important factor in their purchasing decisions.[22]
For Cultivarians, the ethical test is simple: if meat can be made without killing sentient animals, it should be. This transition also ensures a safe, controlled alternative to traditional slaughter.
Once sentience is accepted, the next step is practical: which harmful farming practices can be replaced altogether?
4. Science Should Replace Harmful Farming Practices
If animals can suffer, the next step is simple: how do we cut that harm in practice? For Cultivarians, science should phase out the farming methods that cause the most pain.
Globally, more than 100 billion animals are killed for food each year[25]. Around 74% of land livestock are kept in factory farm conditions[25]. In these systems, standard practices such as intensive confinement, beak trimming, and tail docking cause pain, fear, and chronic stress[26]. That is why Cultivarians look for ways to remove harm, not just limit it.
The replacement is already here. A single, minimally invasive cell biopsy from one cow can, in theory, produce the equivalent of 175 million beef patties[1]. Those cells are then grown in a bioreactor, which means meat can be produced without repeated breeding, slaughter, or large-scale animal killing. And this is no longer just a lab idea. On 21 June 2023, the USDA granted final inspection approvals to UPSIDE Foods and GOOD Meat, allowing the commercial sale of cell-cultivated chicken[24][23].
For Cultivarians, once a better method exists, the old one stops being a necessity.
5. Animal Welfare Claims Must Be Backed by Clear Standards
Reducing harm only means something when welfare claims can be checked. A method may sound better on paper, but if the claim can’t be verified, it shouldn’t be taken at face value.
In the UK, welfare labelling for most animal-based foods is still mostly voluntary[29]. That leaves plenty of room for murky claims, where calming phrases like "humanely raised", "farm-raised", or "high-welfare" appear on pack with no clear standard and no independent audit behind them[30][34]. A 2019 investigation into three Red Tractor-certified farms found chickens collapsing under their own weight and workers kicking live birds.[34]
Cultivarians argue that welfare claims should be treated more like nutrition labels: clear, specific, independently audited, and enforceable. For conventional meat, that means pointing to a named scheme, such as RSPCA Assured, which covers feed, housing, healthcare, transport, and slaughter[27][28], instead of leaning on loose marketing terms.
For cultivated meat, the same principle applies. Companies should state where the cells come from, whether any animal-derived growth media is used, ensuring the process respects sacred life principles, and what animal inputs, if any, still remain in the process[31][6].
The egg industry already showed what happens when labels get clearer. In 2003, mandatory production method labelling led to a 43% increase in free-range egg sales in the UK[32][33]. Clear labelling gives people a fair way to compare welfare claims - which is what the table below shows.
Conventional Meat vs Cultivated Meat at a Glance
The table below sets out the animal welfare gap between conventional and cultivated meat through the lens of the Five Freedoms.
At a basic level, the production model is different. Conventional meat relies on animal rearing and slaughter. Cultivated meat is being developed to cut down both.
Key animal welfare differences in table form
Welfare Factor | Conventional Meat | Cultivated Meat |
Slaughter | Requires rearing and slaughtering animals; about 87.9 billion land animals were slaughtered globally in 2024[9] | Aims to produce meat without routine slaughter; expected outcome, not yet universal at commercial scale |
Number of animals involved | Billions of animals are bred, raised and killed each year; around 74% of land livestock are factory-farmed[25] | Uses a much smaller donor population; one cell sample could, in theory, produce the equivalent of 175 million beef patties[1] |
Confinement and living conditions | High-density housing is common in intensive systems and can severely limit natural behaviour | Does not require large-scale animal housing or confinement |
Fear and distress | Transport, handling and slaughter are major sources of distress | Transport, handling and slaughter are largely avoided |
Painful procedures | Intensive systems can involve painful procedures such as beak trimming and castration | Only a small biopsy is taken from a donor animal |
Antibiotic use | Antibiotics are often used to manage disease risk in crowded conditions | Sterile bioreactor production may reduce antibiotic use |
Animal-derived inputs (e.g. growth media) | Not applicable | Some current processes still use foetal bovine serum (FBS), sourced from slaughtered cattle; the sector is moving towards animal-component-free media[2][15] |
Five Freedoms alignment | UK welfare law sets minimum standards, but intensive systems may still fall short on comfort, pain and the ability to express normal behaviour | Avoids most housing-, transport- and slaughter-related harms |
Cultivated meat is not yet fully slaughter-free across every producer because some processes still use foetal bovine serum. That said, serum-free media already exist, and the sector is moving towards animal-component-free inputs.
Conclusion
These five beliefs point to one simple idea: sentient animals should face less harm, and science can help make that possible. Slaughter does not have to be part of meat production. Because of that, animal welfare becomes the main test of whether producing meat can be defended on ethical grounds.
It’s a humane and practical view. Meat stays on the table, while harm is cut down.
Cultivated meat still has hurdles around scale and cost. But those limits don’t change where things are heading. Transparency and regulation need to keep up with the science. As the technology gets better, the focus should be on clear standards, not vague promises.
The Cultivarian Society exists to build the language and public understanding of Cultivarianism. It is a commitment to using the best available science to align food with animal sentience and reduce suffering.
These five beliefs are a starting point for a more humane, evidence-led food system: meat without slaughter, and less suffering by design.
FAQs
Is cultivated meat really slaughter-free?
Yes. Cultivated meat is made by growing animal cells in controlled bioreactors instead of rearing and slaughtering animals.
The process starts with a small biopsy, usually taken from a living animal under local anaesthetic. After that, the donor animal keeps living.
The sector has also shifted away from slaughter-derived foetal bovine serum and towards animal-free growth media.
How are cells taken from donor animals?
Starter cells for cultivated meat come from a small tissue sample taken from a living animal or from a fertilised egg. In most cases, this is done through a simple biopsy, usually under local anaesthetic.
After that, the donor stays alive and carries on as normal. There’s no need to slaughter the animal as part of the meat production process.
Will cultivated meat need welfare labelling?
Not in the same way as meat from farmed animals. Cultivated meat is made in controlled settings, not through rearing and slaughter, so it avoids welfare harms linked to confinement, transport and killing.
Usual welfare labels focus on how animals are treated within farming systems. Cultivated meat changes the process itself by taking the animal out of production.
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