There's nothing worse than a seemingly simple question that's virtually impossible to answer ... except, perhaps, a simple question with a simple answer that's absolutely infuriating.

Recently, I was speaking with a colleague and collaborator about all the consternation swirling around the cultivated meat industry, when I found myself fluttering around one of those questions.

It is as follows: Why is there so much consternation swirling around cultivated meat but absolutely none around cultivated coffee beans or cocoa?

Granted, cultivated coffee and cocoa aren't my beat, but I've kept up with the whole cell-cultivated sphere and I haven't seen anyone screaming their heads off about this stuff.

In fact, the coverage has made me scratch my head a bit because cell-cultivated cocoa and coffee are celebrated as a means to cut back on deforestation and harmful environmental practices — which is also a key argument in favor of cultivated meat. (One of many, and not even the strongest when you take animal welfare into consideration.)

For a moment, I wondered if the difference was time — cultivated meat has been snatching headlines for about 10 years, but cell-cultivated coffee beans have been science goals since the mid-1970s. So that's not it.

Looking for an outside perspective, I traced this train of thought with my collaborator, and he gave me the most devastating but clearly correct answer:

Nobody cares about cultivated chocolate or coffee beans because no farmer in the Western world is affected by that. Politicians don't have to deal with an upset farmer who can vote, so they don't care. Subsistence farmers in Africa, South America and Southeast Asia? Not the consumer economy's problem.

Damned if he isn't right. And damned if that isn't infuriating.

But there's a little hope in the truth, I think: Rather than arguing with legislators, maybe the solution to the negativity swirling around cultivated meat is to focus on the farmers.

Respectfarms is trying to do just that, and there's plenty of research being done around sussing out what farmers think and feel about cultivated meat.

But maybe the industry needs to be doing more — offering more support, more education, more options. Because if the farmers stop complaining, maybe the legislators will stop doing their thing, as well.

A simple question

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