Analysis Of The Narrative Grammars Of Cultured Meat In UK Food And Farming Media

Cultured meat (CM)—meat produced through animal-derived cell cultures—has garnered considerable media attention with a set of ‘loud’ voices and particular ‘grammars’ that primarily dictate the contemporary media framings of CM. To date, very little research has attempted to understand what the food and farming sector think of CM and, moreover, its potential impacts on farmers, their livelihoods and the farming sector more broadly. This study looks to bring to the fore these more marginalised and understudied food and farming voices, in the form of their legacy media and social media narratives, to explore and analyse the construction and circulation of the grammars of CM in digital, online spaces. To this end, we build specifically on previous research into the discourses of CM (e.g. Goodwin and Shoulders, 2013; Hopkins, 2015; Painter et al, 2020; Stephens and Ruivenkamp, 2016) through an iterative sampling procedure that collected and qualitatively and quantitatively analysed the framing grammars of online discursive UK food and farming media (n=259) discussing CM from 2017 to 2023. Analysing the sources suggested three prominent grammars of CM: 1) CM is a ‘solutionist’ technofix for the UK and explicitly Britain post-Brexit, 2) CM is a ‘virtuous’ technology given its environmental and food security possibilities, and 3) CM is ‘in tension’ with the farming sector as well as consumers’ health and taste buds. Farmers in particular perceive CM as an existential threat to their livelihoods and livestock farming, with some of these grammars verging on the conspiratorial. Yet, some farmers did not see CM as a realistic or potential threat. We conclude with the suggestion that understanding these mediated framings and grammars of CM provides crucial insights into the UK’s food and farming sector’s position on the potential impacts of CM to the future production and consumption of food in an increasingly climate changed world.