Happy Monday, dear readers!
I know everyone is getting ready to celebrate Independence day tomorrow, and most of us are off to turn July 4th into a 4-day weekend. Your humble blogger is, of course, dutifully at his post!
Traditional July 4th celebrations include BBQ, so let your humble blogger ask you – what are you grilling?
Well, the USDA has approved the sale of lab grown meat harvested from animal cells, so how about one of those burgers or hot dogs? Why is being brought to your attention by the humblest of bloggers? Well because assuming lab grown meat can pass both the taste test and the market test, we can expect to see yet another impact on California’s workers’ compensation domain.
Aside from varying opinions on whether killing animals for food is moral or not, the process of animals being raised from a twinkle in a rooster’s eye to a sizzling chicken breast on a plate is one that involves a tremendous amount of labor, often with resulting injuries.
Farming the feed, raising the animals, and processing the animals for packaging and delivery constitutes a substantial amount of California’s employees. Data from EDD shows that the there were an average of 420,825 jobs per month in the agricultural field in 2022, of a total of 18.4 million employees. How will those 420k jobs be affected when the industry shifts to producing more and more meat in labs? How will the trucking industry be affected? The packaging industry?
Assuming consumers gradually shift to lab grown meat and demand for traditional, agriculture-based meat production declines, the “typical” injuries we can expect to see will shift as well.
Your humble blogger has never tried lab grown meat, and will likely be grilling the old fashioned type tomorrow. But, as you take your first bite of the BBQ’s yield tomorrow, while not celebrating our independence as a nation, take a moment to consider how technological advances are likely to impact the industry in which we spend so much of our time and energy. Perhaps this is just another indication that we can expect volume in our field and the costs of workers compensation to decrease?