Consensual Consumption
Named after the ouroboros, a mythical serpent that eats its own tail, Ouroboros Steak is a design kit that asks users to grow their own cells into meat for a biotech version of self-consumption.
The bite-sized pucks of steak made from human cells have provoked controversy and a wave of death threats to its creators, Orkan Telhan, Grace Knight, and Andrew Pelling. The project has inadvertently tapped into rage from right-wing conspiracy theorists who believe that Democrats are promoting cannibalism.
Now touring museums around the world, Ouroboros Steak builds on decades of research into growing meat from animal cells as a way to avoid animal slaughter and lessen the carbon footprint of meat consumption. This industry known as “cellular agriculture” is projected to grow to $214 million by 2025 [1]. The project, however, complicates the ideals of cellular agriculture, drawing attention to the underbelly of an industry which has made a name for itself as being “clean.”
Meera Zassenhaus, Communications and Media Manager at New Harvest, a nonprofit that supports open cellular agriculture research, talked to designer Orkan Telhan about his project.
Orkan was eager to discuss.
Meera.
You received a lot of backlash from people angry about cannibalism. Emails and tweets calling you “wicked” and “pure evil.” Why do you think cannibalism hit a nerve?
Orkan.
We didn’t expect it to be this huge, crazy statement about cannibalism. It was only once the word “cannibalism” was used in the headline of the Dezeen article, and republished on Fox News, and circulated through social media, that the cannibal conversation started. In that sense, the media almost cannibalized the work.
We received a number of messages that accused us—“Democrat scientist or designers”—of being part of conspiracy theories shared by right-wing groups. Pro-life activists spoke up. The anti-science lobby claimed that we wasted so much money, we might as well just eat meat. Business as usual.
A couple of messages crossed the line, and said that they’d feed us to their dogs, then went ahead and detailed the way they would like to see it happen. We decided not to engage and instead spoke to journalists who asked our opinions instead of fueling the fire.
You know, there are lots of anthropological interpretations of why humans eat each other: to gain power, to preserve memories, to eliminate enemies. There are actually a number of nonhuman species that eat or harm themselves. Nobody really knows why an octopus sometimes eats its own arms. Some people say that it’s a stress reaction. Like biting your fingernails [2].
For me, maybe, growing our own cells and eating them is a stress reaction to the impending climate crisis. If people are grossed out by human self-consumption, then hopefully they will just eat less meat more generally. That’s probably a better solution for us all.
M.
The website for the project advertises, “Growing yourself ensures that you and your loved ones always know the origin of your food, how it has been raised, and that its cells were acquired ethically and consensually.” What does consent mean here, and why is it so important?
O.
The question of consent should incorporate nonhumans. We would like to bring into attention a more expansive idea of consent that should negotiate human values with the interests of other species.
This refers to the consent that is not happening in plain sight. There is neither consent in industrial food production nor in cellular agriculture when chicken and fish are harvested for their cells. The idea in the project is that no animal needs to be asked for their permission. I’m interested in bringing back the conversation to animal priorities as opposed to human ones.
As humans, we think we are exceptional, and have the right to gorge on everything in the world. That’s why we need to take consent very seriously.
M.
When I first heard about the kits, I thought of them as a cellular agriculture version of Blue Apron. Hearing you talk about it now, they are sounding more like a “slow food” gourmet version.
O.
The framework of the piece addresses a pressing problem. We’re rapidly approaching many billions of people on Earth. How do we feed them? The reason we got into this situation is overconsumption and the privileges of industrial meat production. The ordinary person does not see the true cost of convenience—the supermarket stocks the shelves overnight; you go online, press a button, loads of meat get delivered. That abstraction is what disturbs me most because hardly anyone knows the consequences of their decisions.
The kits push back against industrial food production and ask how we can use science and technology to move away from that culture of overconsumption.
M.
The cells you ended up using for the prototypes included HeLa cells, which were famously taken from a black woman—Henrietta Lacks—without her consent. How did you make that decision? Were you worried that using HeLa cells might undermine the integrity of the project?
O.
Using HeLa cells, with their legacy of nonconsent, was a deliberate choice for that very reason. We didn’t just use HeLa cells. We used three human cell lines, all taken without consent—HeLa was one of them. However, if we had the choice to use our own cells, we would have. It takes a huge amount of resources to immortalize a cell line. So we had to use commercially available cell lines. HeLa cells are a stand in.
The consent that was never taken from Henrietta Lacks or the donors of the other cell lines is similar to the consent that is not taken from the animals and fish whose cells are used in sciences on a daily basis. There is a huge asymmetry of power. Humans are abusing their power whether it is for science or feeding ourselves.
M.
I was shocked to learn you used Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS), harvested from bovine fetuses taken from pregnant cows during slaughter. It makes sense because there’s no affordable alternative for growing meat from cells. But are you not doing the same thing as companies? Companies also want and intend to make FBS-free meat. They just can’t until the price of FBS alternatives goes down.
O.
I think the thing to be blunt about at the start is that we created this as a prototype for a museum exhibition. In a museum, an artifact can stand for a larger idea. So designers and companies have a different relationship to transparency in this process. It helps if one thinks of an artwork as a question or proposition that exposes a system, which it is also a part of, instead of offering a fix. That is the crux of speculative design.
M.
I’m just having a hard time understanding how you can use FBS in a critique of FBS.
O.
Let me be very specific about our process. We grew cells with FBS to reach an amount that would adhere to mycelium scaffolds. We then fed them with human serum (derived from human blood) until they became meat. So, they were fed with human serum most of the time. There is no commercially available solution—to our knowledge—that can eliminate FBS entirely from culturing cells. There’s no such thing as slaughter-free meat—even if it’s grown in a lab. We just pointed out that using expired donation blood is cheaper and less cruel than using FBS. And more consensual, of course.
The project is not only about critiquing FBS or offering human serum as a magical alternative. It is a critique of human consumption, taboos around violence, desire, and need for protein. Your question is primarily focusing on how the cells are made. But we equally care about the importance of being able to do this at home on your own, and about the larger cultural conversations about eating as a human need, pastime, and fetish. When you grow cells 3-4 months, you develop a relationship with them. Think about it: What does it mean to witness the life of a little blob of cells, to spend time nurturing them for months as they turn into “steaks,” until you make that decision to kill and eat them. This is slow self-cannibalism. More importantly, it is about becoming aware of the messiness of giving and taking life.
Here, the important part is how realistic we could get in showing people how a steak would look when it is made from human cells. What we created is made from real human cells, serum, mycelium scaffolds, and FBS. Using real cells calls for a different set of ethical responsibilities than nonliving materials like paper or plastic. We used blood and human cells to capture the bigger vision of the project. It takes a long time to grow steaks. They require patience and care. It is very different from the instant-access meat culture we are so used to in the United States.
M.
Earlier you said that cannibalism is a stress reaction. Aren’t time and resources—or the lack thereof—stressors? By using FBS in your own critique (because to do otherwise would be too expensive), did you cannibalize your own project?
O.
I would push back. Not because I would like to dismiss your point, but because I think we’re talking about different meanings of cannibalism—and also that you are conflating art and industry. In some ways that makes me happy because that’s exactly what we set out to achieve. Our “product” was meant to challenge what looks and sounds real about cellular agriculture.
M.
So I guess that’s what I meant when I asked if you cannibalized your own work. Your steaks draw attention to the animal exploitation that persists in cellular agriculture despite the industry’s grand claims at being a “clean” technology. But in order to make that point, animals had to die for your own work.
O.
If you want to play with various metaphors of cannibalism, I would say the Ouroboros Steak cannibalized a lot of the people who interpreted it. The world chewed it up, and made it with its own set of interpretations. Every design gets cannibalized by somebody.
It lives in the minds of the people in a different way than you intended. Then the work cannibalizes all the people, because it starts to trigger different reactions and emotions. Because of the “stress” caused by the public reaction of the work, we may make a different version next time. Are we cannibalizing it? Well, we may transform it into a more radical version. But from my perspective, the project is not eating itself. This is your metaphor. And we are humoring metaphors while lots of animals are losing their lives.
[1] Cultured Meat Market by Source (Poultry, Beef, Seafood, Pork, and Duck), End-Use (Nuggets, Burgers, Meatballs, Sausages, Hot Dogs), and Region (North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa, South America) - Global Forecast to 2032. Research and Markets, September 2019.
[2] Budelmann, B.U. “Autophagy in Octopus.” South African Journal of Marine Science, vol. 20 no. 1, 1998, pp. 101-108.
Meera Zassenhaus is communications and media manager at New Harvest.
Orkan Telhan is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and researcher. Telhan is Associate Professor of Fine Arts, emerging design practices in the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. He holds a phd in design and computation from MIT's Department of Architecture.
Cite This Essay
Telhan, Orkan and Meera Zassenhaus. “Consensual Consumption.” Biodesigned: Issue 6, 17 March, 2021. Accessed [month, day, year].
