What is a Cultivarian?
What is a Cultivarian? The Complete Definition of a New Dietary Identity
By David Bell, Founder of The Cultivarian Society
A Cultivarian is someone who chooses cultivated meat over slaughtered meat. We eat real meat — beef, chicken, pork, fish, all of it — but produced from cells rather than killed animals. We are not vegan. We are not vegetarian. We are not flexitarian. We are something new: people who refuse to give up meat but also refuse to keep killing animals to get it.
That is the definition. Everything that follows is the reasoning behind it, the science underneath it, and the case for why this identity now exists as a serious option for the first time in human history.
Why a new word was needed.
English already has words for the dietary positions people have historically been able to take. Vegan: no animal products at all. Vegetarian: no meat, but dairy and eggs are usually fine. Pescatarian: fish but no land animals. Flexitarian: mostly plants, occasional meat. Carnivore: only meat. Omnivore: everything.
None of those words describe a Cultivarian. A Cultivarian eats meat — including beef, chicken, pork, lamb, duck, fish, and shellfish — and would happily eat them daily. So Cultivarians are not vegan, not vegetarian, not pescatarian, not flexitarian. But Cultivarians refuse to eat meat that came from a slaughtered animal. So Cultivarians are not omnivores or carnivores in the conventional sense either.
Until cultivated meat became technically and commercially viable, this position simply wasn't an option. You could not be a meat-eater who refused to participate in slaughter, because there was no meat available that hadn't required slaughter. The word "Cultivarian" exists because the food category exists. The identity follows the technology.
This is the same pattern that produced "vegan" in 1944 (Donald Watson coined it to distinguish strict plant-based diets from vegetarianism), "flexitarian" in the early 2000s, and "plant-based" as a category descriptor in the 2010s. New foods produce new identities, and new identities need new words. "Cultivarian" is the word for the people whose identity has been made possible by cultivated meat.
What cultivated meat actually is.
Cultivated meat is real meat. This is the part many people get wrong on first encounter. It is not plant-based. It is not a meat substitute. It is not soy formed to look like beef. Cultivated meat is biologically identical to conventional meat because it is made of the same cells — actual animal muscle and fat cells — grown in a controlled environment instead of inside a living animal.
The process: a small biopsy is taken from a living animal (usually under local anaesthetic, with no harm to the animal). The cells from that biopsy are placed in a bioreactor — essentially a large stainless steel tank similar to those used in brewing or yoghurt production — and fed a nutrient solution containing amino acids, sugars, vitamins, and growth factors. The cells multiply. Over a period of weeks, they form muscle tissue. That tissue is harvested, processed, and prepared exactly like conventional meat.
Crucially: a single cell sample can produce millions of meals. One biopsy from one cow can theoretically generate the equivalent of 175 million beef patties. The animal that donated the cells continues to live. There is no slaughter at any point in the supply chain.
This is why Cultivarians describe what we eat as "real meat without slaughter". The phrase is not a marketing slogan — it is a literal description of what is on the plate.
THE CULTIVARIAN POSITION, IN DETAIL.
Being a Cultivarian rests on a small number of specific beliefs. Not all Cultivarians hold all of these for the same reasons, but the position itself sits at the intersection of these ideas:
1. Animal slaughter is the moral problem, not meat-eating
This is the central distinction between Cultivarianism and veganism. Vegans hold that the use of animals for food is itself problematic — the dairy cow's life, the laying hen's life, the meat cow's death are all part of an exploitative system that should be ended. Many vegans extend this to the use of animal products in clothing, cosmetics, and entertainment.
Cultivarians take a narrower view. The thing that is wrong is the killing — the moment of slaughter, the lives of factory-farmed animals raised only to be killed, the industrial system that processes 80 billion land animals per year for human food. If you can produce meat without that killing, the moral problem dissolves. The meat itself is not the issue.
This is why Cultivarianism welcomes meat-eaters in a way that veganism, by its design, cannot. A vegan and a Cultivarian agree that factory farming is ethically catastrophic. They disagree on whether the answer is "stop eating meat" or "stop killing animals to get meat". Cultivarians believe the latter is more achievable, more popular, and — once cultivated meat is widely available — more practically transformative.
2. Technology is a legitimate ethical solution
Some philosophical traditions hold that the answer to a problem caused by technology (industrial agriculture, factory farming, mass slaughter) is to step back from technology and return to simpler ways of eating.
Cultivarians do not hold this view. We believe that the same scientific capability that produced the problems of industrial meat production can also solve them — that cellular agriculture, bioreactor design, and modern biology are tools to build a better food system, not threats to a better food system.
This puts Cultivarians firmly in the camp of ethical technologists. We are not Luddites about food. We believe a food future built on bioreactors, vertical farms, and precision fermentation is not just acceptable but desirable — provided it produces food that is real, safe, nutritious, and delicious.
3. Real meat matters
Plant-based meat alternatives have improved enormously in the last decade. Beyond Burger, Impossible Burger, and many others have demonstrated that you can produce a product that mimics ground beef well enough to satisfy many casual consumers. Cultivarians are not against these products — they are part of a broader transition away from slaughter-based meat. But Cultivarians do not believe plant-based alternatives are sufficient on their own.
There are foods plant-based products struggle to replicate at any quality: a properly aged ribeye, sashimi-grade tuna, foie gras, dry-cured prosciutto, soft-shell crab. Beyond a certain threshold of culinary specificity, plant proteins cannot match the flavour, texture, and complexity of actual animal cells. Cultivated meat can — because it is actual animal cells. Cultivarians believe the world will not give up these foods, and should not have to. Cultivated meat is how we keep them while ending the killing.
4. The transition matters as much as the destination
Cultivarians are not waiting for a perfect future where 100% of meat consumption is cultivated. We are interested in the transition itself — every chicken nugget that is cultivated instead of slaughtered, every cultivated salmon fillet that displaces a wild-caught one, every bioreactor that comes online and reduces the number of animals raised for slaughter. Cultivarianism is a practical, gradient-aware identity. You can be a Cultivarian today by choosing cultivated meat whenever it is available, even if that is currently rare. The identity does not require purity; it requires direction.
How Cultivarianism differs from related identities
It is worth being precise about how Cultivarianism relates to other dietary positions, because the distinctions matter and are sometimes blurred.
Cultivarian vs Vegan
Vegans avoid all animal products on principle. Cultivarians eat real meat — including the fat, the cellular structure, the protein — produced from animal cells. A vegan would not eat cultivated meat (because it is meat, and is grown from animal cells originally taken from a living animal). A Cultivarian would. This is the cleanest distinction. Many vegans support cultivated meat as a transitional technology, even if they would not personally eat it; many Cultivarians have nothing but respect for veganism as a moral position. But the dietary practices are different.
Cultivarian vs Vegetarian
Vegetarians do not eat meat. Cultivarians eat meat. The end. Vegetarians who are vegetarian primarily for animal welfare reasons are often the people most curious about Cultivarianism, because the position offers a way to return to meat-eating without compromising the original ethical reason for stopping.
Cultivarian vs Flexitarian
Flexitarians eat mostly plants but occasionally eat conventional meat — meat from slaughtered animals. The flexitarian position is built around reduction rather than substitution. Cultivarians, by contrast, do not need to reduce meat consumption; they substitute the source. A Cultivarian could eat meat at every meal, every day, and remain a Cultivarian, provided the meat is cultivated.
Cultivarian vs Pescatarian
Pescatarians eat fish but no land animals. Cultivarians eat both, provided they are cultivated. Cultivated seafood — particularly cultivated salmon, tuna, and shrimp — is a major frontier of cellular agriculture, and Cultivarians are typically as enthusiastic about cultivated seafood as about cultivated land meat.
Cultivarian vs Conventional Meat-Eater
This is the contrast that matters most for the future of meat. Conventional meat-eaters — the majority of the global population — eat meat from slaughtered animals because that is the only meat that exists at scale today. Cultivarians make a deliberate choice to eat cultivated meat instead, when it is available. The hope is that as cultivated meat becomes cheaper, more available, and more familiar, the practical difference between "conventional meat-eater" and "Cultivarian" becomes a defaulting decision — what you reach for in the supermarket — rather than an ethical stance.
HOW TO BECOME A CULTIVARIAN.
Becoming a Cultivarian is simple and requires no certification, no diet plan, and no membership card. It involves three commitments:
1. Choose cultivated meat where available
A Cultivarian commits to choosing cultivated options where they exist, even when they are more expensive than conventional alternatives, because that purchasing pattern is what drives investment, scale, and price reduction in the category.
2. Commit to switching when cultivated becomes available
Cultivated meat is not yet available in most supermarkets, most cuisines, or most price points. The Cultivarian position is not that you must already eat cultivated meat at every meal — that would be impossible for almost everyone in 2026. The position is that you have made the commitment to switch to cultivated meat as soon as it is realistically available to you. What unites Cultivarians is not a particular diet today; it is the explicit commitment to choose cultivated over slaughtered meat the moment the choice becomes meaningfully available. That commitment is the identity. Everything else is timing.
3. Advocate for the category
The third commitment is cultural rather than dietary. Cultivarians talk about cultivated meat. We explain the science to people who don't know it. We push back on misinformation — the idea that cultivated meat is "fake" or "unnatural" or "the same as plant-based" — because every conversation that clarifies the category contributes to its mainstream acceptance. The Cultivarian Society itself exists for this reason: to build the language, the identity, and the cultural infrastructure that makes the category recognisable to ordinary people.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS.
WHERE THIS GOES FROM HERE.
As cultivated meat reaches price parity with conventional meat — first in chicken, then seafood, then beef and pork — the practical barriers to choosing cultivated will fall, and the dietary identity that goes with it will move from niche to mainstream. The same arc that made "flexitarian" a recognised category in the 2010s, and "plant-based" a supermarket aisle in the 2020s, will make "Cultivarian" a familiar word in the 2030s.
If you are reading this and the position resonates — if you would happily eat meat but cannot stomach the slaughter system that produces it — you are probably a Cultivarian already. The word now exists for what you believe. The identity is yours to claim.
Welcome to the movement
ABOUT THE AUTHOR.
David Bell is the founder of The Cultivarian Society and Cultigen Group, a holding company building infrastructure and intelligence platforms for the cultivated meat industry. A vegan since 2012, David founded the Society to build the language and cultural identity that the cultivated meat category will need to reach mainstream adoption.