The Meaning of Reality Among the Past, the Present and the Future (Perfect): The Case of Cultivated Meat

Welcome by some as a revolution in the food industry, with great potential benefits for the environment, as well as for animal wellbeing and human health, and strongly opposed by others as a threat for “nature”, food “traditions” and even people’s welfare, cultivated meat raises crucial questions about what meat is and what it might become, as well as related to the broader range of technological solutions that are changing the ways we interact with the world. With its ideological clashes, the indeterminate-ness surrounding such a new, “technological food” therefore represents a privileged case study to reflect on the “meaning of reality”, particularly as related to the semiotic processes through which we establish and consoli-date the systems of knowledge that determine the choice of the codes we use to decipher the world around us. Drawing on these considerations, this paper deals with a series of relevant aspects related to cultivated meat and its reception across time, reflecting in particular on how three differ-ent dimensions — the past, the present, and the future — intertwine with each other in such processes.