University of Cambridge Student Wins PETA’s ‘Future Without Speciesism’ Award

For Immediate Release:
December 10, 2024

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

University of Cambridge postgraduate student Callan MacDonald is the inaugural cash-award winner of PETA’s “Future Without Speciesism” contest for an innovation that could revolutionize the lab-grown meat industry.

Contest applicants were tasked with identifying how 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 for his winning invention, “AgriCell,” a first-of-its-kind cell bank to archive and preserve the most advanced primary cells for meat cultivation. Without a reliable repository of high-quality animal cells that can be grown at an industrial scale, lab-grown meat developers kill animals, hoping to find cells that might work. This unpredictable process is a significant stumbling block for the cultivated meat industry.

MacDonald’s nonprofit organization intends to acquire and supply genetically identical cells 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 Associate Director of Innovation and Execution Kenneth Montville. “PETA has long championed cultivated meat, and we’re delighted to recognize 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 U.S. 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 or prevent applicants from patenting their inventions.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.