Will we ever eat again?

The future of meat

Article

No. 26 • June 2022

Earlier this year, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its most alarming report to date. The investigation identified livestock agriculture as one of the key obstacles to achieving the current climate goals. By examining our position within the natural order alongside developments in artificial meat, Peter den Dekker imagines what place animals will have within our future food chains.

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text: Peter Den Dekker

Alexandre-François Desportes, Stilleven met gekleed wild, vlees en fruit, 1734, olieverf op doek, 121 × 95 cm, National Anna Maria Maiolino, Gallery of Art, Washington

Fig 1. Alexandre-François Desportes, Still Life with Dressed Game, Meat and Fruit, 1734, oil on canvas, 121 × 95 cm | National Anna Maria Maiolino, Gallery of Art, Washington

I’ve forgotten most things about my grandparents’ house. But not the smell of simmering, stewing beef: an aroma that always came from an enamel casserole dish with a lid, perched atop a dark-blue-marbled petroleum stove on the table. It took the better part of a day for the thread-like meat to start falling apart. And now whenever I catch a whiff of that smell, I’m instantly transported over fifty years into the past, to the dear old house with grand- ma and grandpa. Because you can’t go wrong with the foods and flavours from childhood – grandma was good, and that meant her food was good too. Who would ever doubt it?

Grandpa, after a night of bobbing and snig- gling on a small fishing boat in the Ganzendiep river, would always return in the morning with a tin bucket full of eels.