Are we on the cusp of the consumer biotech age, when lab-grown meat will be just as common as farmed meat? Recently, a company called Memphis Meats started selling in-vitro meat (IVM) that apparently tastes just like delicious chicken and duck. But if we want the price on an IVM burger to get below $1,000, we need consumers to buy lots of the stuff. That's why two Australian researchers from the University of Queensland decided to study what the US public currently thinks about eating IVM.

Psychologist Matti Wilks and veterinary scientist Clive Phillips surveyed 673 people via Mechanical Turk, asking a wide range of questions about their backgrounds and attitudes toward meat eating. What they found is that roughly two-thirds of their subjects would be willing to try IVM, and a third thought it might become a regular part of their diets. Wilks and Phillips suggest that this means people are open to eating IVM, but don't think it would replace farmed meat.

That said, none of these subjects had ever eaten IVM before. Given that 79 percent of them were concerned that IVM would lack flavor or aesthetic appeal, it's possible they might change their minds if it tasted exactly like farmed meat. Many people were also dissuaded by the idea of paying more for IVM than farmed meat. Presumably these subjects might become regular consumers if IVM were tasty and affordable.

But some people will never want to eat meat that wasn't part of a living animal. Roughly a quarter of respondents had ethical concerns about eating IVM, which they worried was "unnatural."

PLoS One

PLoS One

Also, certain groups were much more open to IVM than others. Men were slightly more likely to say they would try it than women. Liberals and city-dwellers were more curious about IVM than conservatives, generally for ethical and environmental reasons. Interestingly, people with higher incomes thought IVM was "less ethical" and were less willing to try it than people with lower incomes. And though vegetarians and vegans were more likely to agree that IVM was ethical and better for the environment, they were also less willing to eat it than meat-eaters are.

Write Wilks and Phillips in a paper about their results in PLoS One: "These results demonstrate an apparent paradox: those who are already meat restrictive appear less willing to engage with IVM; however, along with pescatarians, these groups generally reported more positive views of IVM compared to farmed meat."

The subjects' interests in different kinds of IVM also varied wildly. For example, people who eat farmed fish were largely uninterested in IVM fish. But people who never eat dog, cat, or horse said they'd be willing to try the IVM versions. Wilks and Phillips speculate that this is a result of the Western idea that some animals shouldn't be eaten because they are companions. Once they are just vat-grown slabs of tissue, that ethical concern goes away and people are curious to taste cat burgers and literal hot dogs.

PLoS One, 2017. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0171904