There’s a debate going on about lab grown meat. A lot of the discussion is devoted to what we are going to call it and whose jurisdiction it will fall under. This discussion isn’t without merit.

If you haven’t heard about lab grown meat, it’s an effort to create a product similar to traditionally raised beef. In fact the goal is to make it indistinguishable. This product won’t come from a pasture on some rolling Iowa hills. This product will come from a laboratory. Poultry and pork will likely follow, but given their lower price point it will take longer.

In 2014 a Pew Research Poll asked 1000 U.S. adults if they “would eat meat that was grown in a lab?” 78 percent responded no.

In 2018, Michigan State University’s Food and Literacy Engagement Poll, in an effort to get past the perception of how the product is labeled, asked 2100 Americans, “How likely would you be to purchase foods that look and taste identical to meat, but are based on ingredients that are produced artificially?” They found a third of Americans would be willing to try such a product.

Then in August of this year came a Faunalytics survey. They prompted respondents with statements on the role of antibiotics and hormones in traditional animal agriculture. They used the term “clean meat” and defined it as real meat without the need to raise and slaughter animals. Their survey reported that 2/3 of Americans would be willing to try this product, although it is in essence the same as those above.

On the surface, these polls seem to reinforce the importance of what it is named. I wholeheartedly support the effort of agriculture to defend it’s own terminology and fend off disparaging attacks (what does clean meat imply about its traditionally raised counterpart?) from others.

An example I hear, again and again, is that the dairy industry lost control of the term “milk.” The implication is that they could have done something different. We should ask ourselves to what extent they really could have? It would help us frame the efforts of our own.

Does milk or meat mean what we think it does? Yes, milk is lactated from a mammal, but we also use it in other ways. Take a coconut. From it comes a white liquid we sometimes refer to as…. and it leaves behind a white flesh some call its…

Again, I do believe with nomenclature there are some things we can and ought to do to protect our product. But I also believe advertising executives pulling in six and seven figures probably make it because they are better in the name game than I am. Take Silk’s almond milk for example. What name did they settle on? Almondmilk. Kind of has nice ring of litigation to it, doesn’t it?

Go back up to those polls, though. I’d suggest they are telling you something else besides the importance of a name. They are telling you about the importance of a story. They are telling you about the importance of who tells it.

We have a great one. We have herds of living solar panels converting sunlight into protein. They can do so on a land area unfit for any other type of agricultural production. They can be managed in a way that is far more beneficial to soil health than if we had left the acres idle, scrubbing carbon from the air and getting it in the ground. Animals whose byproducts are used entirely, making them sources of rural vitality and part of an honorable way of life.

Names will come. Names will go. Stories tend to stick around. We should continue to learn to better tell our own.