The installation of steak grown from human cells at the Design Museum in London was intended to criticise the meat industry's rising use of living cells from animals. It ended up triggering a roiling debate about bioethics and the pitfalls of artistic critique.
Orkan Telhan, an artist and associate professor of fine arts at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania, spent the last year imagining how climate change might impact the future of food consumption. He collaborated with scientists to create a project that included 3D-printed pancakes, bio engineered bread and genetically modified salmon. But it was their provocative, and less appetising, development of what they call "Ouroboros Steak," meat cultivated from human cells and expired blood, that challenged the sustainability practices of the nascent cellular agriculture industry, which develops lab-grown products from existing cell cultures.
After the Ouroboros Steak traveled to the Design Museum in October, an intense online debate grew over the project's motivations, and the artist received dozens of threatening emails and social media posts calling him "wicked" and "pure evil." Some messages have demanded the destruction of the artwork. According to Telhan, who provided the emails and tweets to a reporter, "the focus quickly became centered on accusations that we were promoting cannibalism."
Telhan added, "It was a misinterpretation that became politicised in all the wrong ways because humans eating each other is a taboo topic."
Named after the ancient symbol of a snake eating its own tail, "Ouroboros Steak" examines, but does not promote, auto-cannibalism as a satirical take on the increasing demand for meat products around the world, which scientists have warned will likely contribute to carbon emissions and reduced biodiversity. The designers hoped that shocking audiences with the suggestion would trigger an examination of environmental responsibility and the clean-meat industry, which has promoted itself as producing "kill-free" food, although most companies heavily rely on fetal bovine serum harvested during the slaughter of pregnant cows for cell cultivation.