University of Cambridge Student Wins PETA US’s ‘Future Without Speciesism’ Award
University of Cambridge Student Wins PETA US’s ‘Future Without Speciesism’ Award
Cambridge – University of Cambridge postgraduate student Callan MacDonald, from Northam in Devon, is the inaugural cash-award winner of PETA US’s “Future Without Speciesism” contest for an innovation that could revolutionise the lab-grown meat industry.
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Contest applicants were tasked with identifying ways in which animals are subject to speciesism – the archaic notion that humans are superior to other animals and are therefore entitled to exploit them – and devising an action plan or design for a marketable animal-free replacement.
MacDonald received $2,500 (approx. £2,000) for his winning invention “AgriCell,” a first-of-its-kind cell bank to archive and preserve the most advanced primary cells for meat cultivation. In the absence of a reliable repository of high-quality animal cells that can be grown at an industrial scale, lab-grown meat developers kill animals in the hopes of finding cells that might work. This unpredictable process is a significant stumbling block for the cultivated meat industry.
MacDonald’s nonprofit organisation intends to acquire and supply cells, which are genetically identical and capable of infinite replication, to academic and private laboratories developing new cultivated meat products without killing additional animals. Market researchers predict the global cultivated meat industry could be worth nearly $14 billion by 2043.
“Callan’s groundbreaking work puts lab-grown meat one step closer toward market viability without animal suffering,” says PETA UK Science Advisor Jeffrey Brown. “PETA has long championed cultivated meat, and we’re delighted to recognise AgriCell as a critical safety net for animals.”
Pigs are soothed by music, cows mourn when a loved one dies or when they’re separated from each other, and chickens enjoy taking dust baths, roosting in trees, and lying in the sun. Yet billions of these animals lead short, miserable lives in the meat industry, where they’re subjected to extreme crowding, routine mutilations without pain relief, a terrifying trip to the slaughterhouse, and a violent, painful death. Animal agriculture also fuels the climate catastrophe and the emergence of zoonotic diseases linked to the rearing of animals for food.
The contest remains open to students worldwide and does not convey ownership rights to PETA US or prevent applicants from patenting their inventions.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, or Instagram.
Contact:
Jennifer White +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]
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