Hocus-pocus tricks and moral progressions: the emerging meanings of cultured meat in online news comments

ABSTRACT Narratives of cellular agriculture, or food technologies using cell cultivation to produce agricultural products such as cultured meat, promise sustainable, ethical alternatives as well as solutions to global food challenges. Although cultured meat is unavailable to consumers, people have formed opinions about it on the basis of media coverage. Drawing on studies of the meaning system of food and the media publicity surrounding cultured meat, the aim is to analyze the emerging meanings of cultured meat in Finnish online news comments (n = 662). The comments were examined using qualitative content analysis and the results were utilized to construct an emerging meaning system for cultured meat. The results indicate that this system draws from nine themes and three aggregate categories, based on the following questions: Why is cultured meat necessary (environmental, animal wellbeing and healthiness considerations)? What are the anticipated product characteristics (naturalness, potential risks and sensory qualities)? How is cultured meat expected to influence societies (the role of actors, decision-making and inequities caused by cultured meat)? The uncertainties of these issues have led to conflicting interpretations, which prevent the achievement of a shared definition of cultured meat and complicate the establishment of cultured meat as an accepted food.


Introduction
Globally, meat is being consumed more than ever before. It is estimated that the global demand for meat increases synchronously with the global population growth (FAO 2018). Livestock products are valued, tasty, nutritious, and deeply rooted in Western food customs. Meat consumption is often rationalized as being necessary, natural, normal, and nice (Piazza et al. 2015). Meat production in turn is important for global food security and rural livelihoods, but industrial animal farming in particular has wellknown harmful consequences. Livestock production is associated with breaches of animal ethics and environmental burdens such as climate change, increasing greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation due to increased land use and land use changes, the eutrophication of water bodies, and the loss of biodiversity (Godfray et al. 2018;Poore and Nemecek 2018). The overconsumption of livestock products is associated with negative human health issues such as foodborne illnesses, diet-related diseases, antibiotic resistance, and medicine residues in food (Jones et al. 2013;O'Neill 2015;Wolk 2017;Willett et al. 2019;Espinosa, Tago, and Treich 2020).
A novel solution has been proposed for maintaining the benefits of meat while also reducing its negative impacts. Cellular agriculture refers to a novel food industry sector that utilizes cell cultivation to create agricultural commodities (Stephens et al. 2018;Rubio, Xiang, and Kaplan 2020). One promising product of cellular agriculture is cultured meat, also known as in-vitro, lab-grown, cell-based, clean, or cultivated meat (Datar, Kim, and d'Origny 2016;Stephens et al. 2018), which is grown in a bioreactor from animal cells and involves no animal slaughter (Post 2012).
Although cultured meat was accepted by the regulatory body and introduced to the market in Singapore at the beginning of December 2020, 1 it is not yet widely available on the market. People have not seen or tried cultured meat yet, but they have still formed opinions on the basis of media coverage, social media discussions and information searches. However, the media often present cultured meat positively (Painter, Brennen, and Kristiansen 2020), leaving people wondering about potential product attributes, technologies, and the science behind these cellular agriculture products. An analysis of recent scientific studies of cultured meat reveals that its development seems to have stagnated somewhat (Chriki and Hocquette 2020; for more information about the scientific, sustainability, socio-political and regulatory challenges of cultured meat, see; Stephens et al. 2018;Post et al. 2020).
Food, diets, and eating are multidimensional cultural phenomena that are intertwined with values, ideals, and identities. The inseparability of food and cultural meaningmaking systems is obvious when we compare the variety of eating habits in different geographical areas: humans could utilize enormous amounts of different edible substances as food, but societies and communities have established norms that steer what is considered fit or preferable for human consumption. Changes in food technologies and the introduction of emerging products such as cultured meat will have an impact on people's culturally informed perceptions of food (Wurgaft 2019).
Our study explores the emerging meaning system for cultured meat represented in the naturally occurring online comments of Finnish media audiences from 2013 to 2019. By "emerging meaning system" we refer to the opinions of the public that shape the potential acceptance or rejection of cultured meat before the product is even on the market. More than 70 start-up companies are developing cultured meat globally (Byrne 2021; see also Choudhury, Tseng, and Swartz 2020), but none of these are in Finland. The media publicity regarding cultured meat is also rather limited in Finland. The main media outlets such as the national broadcasting company YLE and the leading newspaper Helsingin Sanomat have recently published ten online articles about cultured meat and cellular agriculture. The tone of journalistic reporting in Finland is mostly positive and follows the conventions of the international media publicity of cultured meat. Recent themes in the media describe future food technologies, products such as cultured meat, and a potential food revolution that cellular agriculture could create in the future. 2 The abovementioned media outlets have also reported on the five-episode TV-show "Can this be eaten? -A road trip to future of food," aired on YLE's TV channels and online television during the spring of 2021, 3 which presented cellular agriculture and other future food technologies.
The media publicity of novel products such as cultured meat will have an impact on public sentiment when the products are launched onto the market and are introduced into the existing meaning systems of food. Understanding how people construct or perceive the emerging meaning system for cultured meat is beneficial for anticipating the product's future consumer reception and the possible obstacles to its adoption. Our analysis shows that arguments both for and against a cell-cultured product are already being raised among the public. Ignoring people's possible concerns about new food technologies early on can have far-reaching consequences for the future of these technologies. Mohorčich and Reese (2019) compared the trajectories of cultured meat and GMO food, concluding that cultured meat may encounter similar opposition campaigns as those faced by GMO if the concerns of the public are not taken seriously. By exploring the emerging meanings of cultured meat in online news comments, our study contributes to anticipating the possible future challenges of cultured meat and the potential mismatches between the current meaning system of food and cellular agriculture products.
We draw on Mary Douglas's (1966) anthropological study of the meaning system of food and her theories on the cultural categories of purity and danger. Ditlevsen's and Andersen's (2021) update on Douglas's categorial definitions of naturalness once again makes this body of cultural theory relevant for studying today's consumption and offers tools for understanding some of the issues that may slow down or impede the adoption of novel food technologies.
Meaning systems operate as foundations for structuring human experience and behavior by providing an explanation for why people perceive or understand something as they do. In Douglas's theory, a meaning system or "a systematic ordering of ideas" (1966, 51) has a structure, although the opinions or behaviors rooted in it may seem peculiar to an outsider. Meaning systems may have inconsistencies, but they tend to follow an intrinsic logic that makes sense for those initiated into the system. Douglas (1966) sought to understand these meanings in several contexts, including food, by studying the notions of purity, pollution, and taboo. She associated food taboos with categorical identities and symbolic boundaries. Consumers tend to rely on the symbolic notions of naturalness and purity when evaluating whether something is edible (Siegrist and Sütterlin 2017;Ditlevsen and Andersen 2021). Power and human domination over nature, the representation of masculinity and patriarchy, and a sign of modernity and affluence are examples of the symbolic meanings often associated with meat (e.g., Adams 1990;Fiddes 1991). As novel foods such as cultured meat are introduced to existing food systems, their symbolic meanings are constructed and negotiated in both public discourses and people's everyday encounters with the subject.
Novel foods such as cultured meat (Siegrist and Sütterlin 2017;Siegrist, Sutterlin, and Hartmann 2018) or GMO foods (Mohorčich and Reese 2019) often encounter opposition because consumers consider them unnatural. Douglas's theory on purity and danger offers a framework for understanding this reasoning. According to Douglas's (1966) famous statement, "dirt" is matter out of place -something unwanted that is transgressing the borders of cultural categories. For example, gravel from the park becomes dirt when it is brought into the categorial order of the house on boot soles. When something escapes the limits of established cultural categories, it becomes ambiguous and disordered, and is often deemed impure, dirty, or even dangerous.
Especially when it comes to food, these often-implicit orders tend to have significant importance. Furthermore, our moral system partially supports the division between purity and danger (Douglas 1966). This means that the notions of naturalness and purity tend to be interrelated with beliefs of what is morally good, desirable, and secure, whereas unnaturalness and contamination are related to breaking the moral order. Disgust is often a reaction to or expression of something that breaks the fundamental order of what is considered safe, natural, healthy, morally good, and virtuous.
In everyday use, the word "natural" is often understood as a kind of objective state of the natural world that is free of human influence. However, "naturalness" usually refers to something that is "conventional," "usual" or "ordinary." What is considered natural or unnatural varies in different historical and situational contexts (Ditlevsen and Andersen 2021, 103.) In Douglas's (1966) work, naturalness was interrelated with perceptions of cleanliness and hygiene. In their recent retake of Douglas's work, Ditlevsen and Andersen (2021) argue that these concepts are now changing. Cleanliness and hygiene have been common signs of purity, but in the context of food and human health, "dirt" may also be a sign of purity and naturalness (Ditlevsen and Andersen 2021, 180). The symbols of naturalness direct food consumption, and "natural," "pure" and healthy food is now preferably "not-too-clean." The dichotomies of pure/impure, clean/dirty, and natural/ unnatural are clear in the Finnish news comment debates on cultured meat. One of our arguments is that the perceptions of unnatural food as too clean are shaping the meaning systems of cultured meat, especially among those in our research data who oppose it.
Our holistic or synthetic approach is inclined to fit things together rather than dismantle phenomena. The meanings that people tend to associate with cultured meat consist of seemingly disparate observations and ideas. We aim to show how these associations represent the components of the emerging meaning system for cultured meat, and to better understand how people perceive and justify their opinions on novel foods in their everyday lives. Taking into consideration the public's concerns and expectations will be beneficial for developing more sustainable and socially just food systems, as cultured meat will potentially extend the traditional perceptions of meat and the food that humans eat. This article proceeds by reviewing the existing research on the media publicity of cultured meat. Online news comments tend to be related to news items that spark a desire to comment on a specific issue. The literature review is followed by descriptions of online news comment data, a qualitative analysis method, and the procedure we use for constructing an emerging meaning system for cultured meat. The concluding section discusses the results in relation to the extant research on the media coverage of cultured meat, considers potential avenues for further research, and presents the limitations of the qualitative research setting.

Cultured meat in media studies
The media play a considerable role in transmitting and translating the findings of scientific research and novel technological innovations for citizens and consumers (McCluskey, Kalaitzandonakes, and Swinnen 2016). Similarly, media coverage influences consumer acceptance of cultured meat (Bryant and Dillard 2019;Bryant and Barnett 2020). Advocates of cultured meat and the popular media refer frequently to the certainty of cultured meat and its ability to save the world from the problems associated with factory livestock production (Metcalf 2013). The international media mostly reports positively on cultured meat and emphasizes this future product's potential benefits, which range from benefits for the environment, human health, and animal welfare to benefits for food safety and food security (Painter, Brennen, and Kristiansen 2020).
However, the media has been criticized for its over-optimistic rhetoric of hope (Stephens et al. 2018), which is primarily fed by cultured meat researchers, representatives of start-up companies and cellular agriculture NGOs, as well as journalists (Goodwin and Shoulders 2013). Positive media coverage may partly stem from the fact that the emerging field of operations or "the space" has succeeded in attracting a substantial amount of high-risk investment and venture capital (Stephens, Sexton, and Driessen 2019, 2). The extant studies of the media coverage of cultured meat can be divided into two categories: studies that analyze the media materials of the London media event, and studies that examine the general media coverage of cultured meat.
The first strand of studies examined the media event held in London in August 2013, during which a research group led by Professor Mark Post from the University of Maastricht introduced the first cultured meat hamburger patty and test-tasted it on an international panel. Hopkins (2015) studied the media coverage of the London event in the US, Canada and the UK, concluding that the Western media created a distorted image of the acceptance barriers and challenges of cultured meat by over-emphasizing the importance of its reception amongst sparse vegetarians instead of addressing current consumer markets and segments. Stephens and Ruivenkamp (2016) argued that the event's international media imagery that was spread on the internet mediated how the audiences perceived cultured meat by specifying what cultured meat is and what people can do with it. O'Riordan, Fotopoulou, and Stephens (2017) examined the media event as a special performative moment: according to them, it was an exemplary case of special promotional publicity, characterized by an atmosphere of acceptance and carefully selected participants. Inviting people to come and witness the organized test setting was a form of supporting or endorsing cultured meat, creating the feeling of participation and an opportunity to share the attendees' experiences among the larger body of media audiences following the event from a distance (O'Riordan, Fotopoulou, and Stephens 2017). The London media event was exceptional in its favorableness toward cultured meat, and the case is revealing in several ways; it proved to be an efficient means of introducing the novel food technology to the public in an uplifting tone, it succeeded in setting a global-level agenda and attracting an exceptionally large audience with just one well-planned event.
Research on the media coverage of cultured meat in the print media in the US and Europe has identified six recurring themes (Goodwin and Shoulders 2013): the media reported the expected benefits, recounted the topic's history, and described the production processes and how cultured meat should be developed in the future. It also highlighted market launch forecasts and described the problems of current livestock production, the general doubts regarding consumer acceptance and concerns, the potential risks of cultured meat, and negative impressions. Another study from Australia showed that scientific studies tended to emphasize the promises of environmental and animal welfare and food security benefits, whereas the media focused on the so-called ontological struggles concerning the nature of cultured meat: how it should be understood and presented to the public (Dilworth and McGregor 2015).
The print media were defined as a public arena in which different actors seek to influence the public perceptions of cultured meat, leading to the creation of specific social and environmental positions that escalate into definition contests. Concerns about the unnaturalness and unpleasantness of cultured meat and the aversion to it presented in the media became a central framing practice in the early media publicity, although the related ethical themes were not considered in wider social and cultural contexts (Dilworth and McGregor 2015). A recent study of the US and UK traditional media from 2013 to 2019 shows that the tone of media coverage has changed, and that positive narratives about cultured meat are now more typical than cautionary ones (Painter, Brennen, and Kristiansen 2020). In addition, contaminants that could potentially threaten the technology's viability tend to be systematically excluded from mainstream media reporting (Murray 2018). Laestadius (2015) and Laestadius and Caldwell (2015) analyzed US online news comments on the 2013 media event. Laestadius (2015) identified five themes through which the commenters addressed cultured meat: animal welfare, environmental protection and sustainability, the advancement of equity and fairness, the preservation of naturalness in the food system, and using resources to maximize social benefits. People's concerns about cultured meat, such as feared health risks and the anticipated poor taste of the novel product, were primarily on the individual level, whereas the benefits were expected to be societal or global levels, as in the case of environmental protection, animal welfare, and food equity (Laestadius and Caldwell 2015). Laestadius and Caldwell (2015) found that the overall tone of the commenting was negative: the comments focused on the unnaturalness of cultured meat and its expected unpleasantness as food, and on societal and economic issues such as the disappearance of traditional agriculture, the degradation of rural areas, and the dominance of large, multinational companies. Some commenters also created dystopic future visions of zombie and Frankenstein meat, and generally claimed that a product such as cultured meat was not needed. The positive comments concerned general environmental advantages, animal welfare issues, and health benefits, following the rhetoric of the legacy media. Scientific advancement was also considered favorable, as was the potential culinary progress that cultured meat could promote (Laestadius and Caldwell 2015). The online commenters anticipated that concerns about unnaturalness and various risks would be clear obstacles to the general acceptance of cultured meat (Laestadius and Caldwell 2015). Conceptions of naturalness are central in food and food technology issues (Román, Sánchez-Siles, and Siegrist 2017): foods perceived as natural are considered ethical, whereas unnatural foods are more easily regarded as morally suspicious or disgusting, or are even feared (Laestadius 2015;Siegrist and Sütterlin 2017;Ditlevsen and Andersen 2021;Wilks, Hornsey, and Bloom 2021). Reactions of disgust are usually connected to the production method of cultured meat, which is perceived as unnatural Siegrist and Sütterlin 2017).

Cultured meat in online news comments
Previous studies of online comments about cultured meat have been more negative than the media publicity about cultured meat and have provided detailed accounts from the commenters' perspective. Next, we turn to online comment data collected in Finland and describe the analysis procedure.

Data and methods
The data consisted of 662 online news comments on cultured meat, generated by 440 commenters, which had no research purpose (see Appendix A). Nine online news articles (2013-2019) describing cultured meat stimulated these commenters. The second author collected the data via an internet search engine utilizing search phrases such as "artificial meat," "cultured meat" and "laboratory meat" in Finnish. Although several media items have addressed cultured meat, the data search targeted Finnish online news sites that offered an open comment section.
The convenience sample was collected from the online comment sections of articles from three Finnish newspapers (Helsingin Sanomat, Maaseudun Tulevaisuus, Ilta-Sanomat) and from two Finnish periodicals (Tiede, Kaksplus). The data also included public comments presented on four social media pages and discussion forums that referred to the news articles. The total data corpus consisted of 164 pages of text. The commenters mainly used pseudonyms, which enabled them to anonymously present their opinions and write about issues that they would not otherwise have shared. The data were in Finnish and the authors have themselves translated the quotations utilized in this article.
The data are considered public: online discussions on newspaper and periodical websites and their social media pages are freely accessible. To protect the privacy of the commenters, we anonymized the data corpus by removing identification and pseudonym information. The comments quoted in this article are presented without identification to ensure anonymity.
We see the online comments here as socially constructed descriptions of a food product that may potentially be available in the future. We used qualitative content analysis (Schreier 2012;Mayring 2014) to identify and then arrange the preliminary themes of cultured meat in the online comment data. The coding process was data-led. We had no prior interpretation theory for classifying the data; we constructed the themes directly from the comment texts or first-level perceptions. Therefore, the analysis process loosely followed a grounded theory approach (Glaser and Strauss 1967;Bryant 2017). The results of the content analysis or the second-level themes were utilized in the next analysis stage as materials, from which the researchers constructed the emerging meaning system or the aggregate-level categories for cultured meat.
The unit of analysis or coding was one sentence, as online news comments tend to be compact, and paragraph-level analysis was sometimes impossible. Preliminary coding revealed that focusing or counting singular words led to missing the discussion contexts. Other ways of outlining the coding unit, such as grouping the data in terms of the time of the comments, analyzing the comments of one commenter at a time, or focusing on discussion chains tended to steer the analysis toward either general themes or specific debates.
We analyzed the data in several steps. After the second author collected and combined the comments into a single text file, we coded the data according to the commenter and news source and anonymized them before further examination. The qualitative data analysis software ATLAS.ti (version 8.4.20) was utilized in the analysis process, which was divided into four overlapping phases: 1) Coding the data for analysis purposes, 2) Identifying and classifying the first-level perceptions of positive and negative comments on cultured meat, 3) Constructing the second-level themes of cultured meat on the basis of repeated topics of conversation, and 4) On the basis of the themes, constructing three aggregate-level categories to represent the emerging meaning system for cultured meat.
During the first phase, the data corpus was coded according to the tone of the comments. We listed the positive and negative statements regarding cultured meat and compared them. Some of the comments did not fit this dichotomous classification: positive and negative arguments used the same justifications. In the second phase, we utilized singular expressions about cultured meat or first-level perceptions to construct the general themes that the commenters associated with cultured meat in their own words. In the third phase, we analyzed the contents of the nine second-level themes. In the last phase, we constructed three aggregate-level categories that described the fundamental parts of the emerging meaning system for cultured meat from the perspective of Finnish media audiences.

Comments for and against cultured meat
The dichotomous coding of the data into favoring and opposing comments represents the ambiguity of cultured meat as a food. The commenters who expressed negative opinions did not believe that cultured meat could resolve environmental problems that were mainly caused by the growing global population or massive fossil energy usage. Some of them did not consider rearing farmed animals problematic; they perceived it as a normal activity and preferred conventionally produced meat. In our sample, most of the commenters who identified themselves as vegans or vegetarians perceived cultured meat as unnecessary and unhealthy. According to extant research, vegetarians and vegans usually perceive cultured meat positively for ethical reasons (Hopkins and Dacey 2008; Alvaro 2019) but are not interested in consuming it.
Most of the commenters with a negative stance perceived cultured meat as unnatural, unethical, and unhealthy. In addition to these "three U's," they considered it artificial (as opposed to "real" or "original") and disgusting, mainly because of its production method. Prior studies have associated the perceived artificiality, unethicality, and health risks of cultured meat with conceptions of unnaturalness (Laestadius 2015;Siegrist and Sütterlin 2017). Some of the commenters in our data suggested that the product and sensory qualities of cultured meat would be inferior to those of conventionally produced meat. They questioned the motives of researchers and companies, and accused the media of biased reporting. The commenters also suspected that the production method of cultured meat would negatively influence employment and livelihoods in the conventional agriculture sector and the rural areas observed in prior studies (Burton 2019;Shaw and Mac Con Iomaire 2019;Bryant 2020;Helliwell and Burton 2021;Newton and Blaustein-Rejto 2021;Moritz et al., 2022).
The commenters who adopted a positive stance perceived cultured meat as a necessary and welcome product. Their arguments were related to positive environmental impacts and animal wellbeing. The Finnish online discussions hardly mentioned global food security improvements. To some of the commenters, cultured meat meant moral progress for humanity and was an ethical goal in itself. Online commenters in a prior study stressed that developing cultured meat is an ethical imperative (Laestadius 2015), as humanity needs to find practical solutions to the challenges of factory livestock farming.
The positively inclined commenters perceived cultured meat as equally healthy as or even healthier than conventionally produced meat. Some of them claimed that meat is meat, regardless of its production method and that the quality of cultured meat would be the same as that of conventionally produced meat. A novel finding was the perception of cultured meat as a way for those with dietary restrictions to eat more environmentally friendly and ethically produced meat. Cultured meat was seen as being as natural as conventionally produced meat because the two have similar biological bases and naturalness should be considered a socially constructed impression that can change over time.

Is cultured meat necessary?
Companies and researchers have justified the necessity of cultured meat as it may be able combat environmental problems, support animal ethics, and strengthen global food security. In this section, we explain the online commenters' perceptions of how necessary the development of cultured meat is. Their opinions on whether such products are required were often divergent and occasionally strongly expressed. Their justifications for cultured meat concerned the environment, animal wellbeing and nutrition, but they also used similar arguments for rejecting the product.

Cultured meat and environmental debates
Another benefit of and justification for cultured meat was the reduced environmental impacts of livestock production and improved farmed animal welfare: [cultured meat is . . .] a great change for the better. Our current fatty, bony and stringy meat that makes animals suffer, pollutes groundwater, and lets methane into the atmosphere will revolt us in the future. (Commenter) Although the reviewed studies showed that many people saw cultured meat as potentially reducing the environmental impacts of current livestock production Barnett 2018, 2020), some commenters perceived it as either totally useless or a dysfunctional solution to environmental problems. However, nobody denied the environmental challenges of current food systems, and some commenters steered the focus toward more harmful emission sources such as fossil fuel usage. Several commenters did not understand why cultured meat was needed at all. Similarly, the negative picture of conventional meat production presented by the media was not considered realistic: 'Reducing meat eating is one of the key factors in preventing climate change' [quotation from news item]. This makes no sense at all. The biggest greenhouse gas producer in our country is energy production, almost 80%, and the share of the whole agriculture sector is approximately 10% (not only meat production) [. . .] Eating meat doesn't influence the climate any more than eating vegetables. It really doesn't convince us when people shamelessly tell such lies. Producing food products may have an impact yes, not on livestock farming, but on intensive farming. The production method is what matters here. Livestock can even have a positive impact on soil's carbon-binding qualities while pasturing, but people completely ignore this impact when they're blinded by the disadvantages. (Commenter) Some commented that rearing cows may have positive impacts on the environment and the circular economy which would be lost in cultured meat production. Rearing cows was perceived as having other important functions in socio-ecological systems, in addition to producing meat. This perspective still classified farmed animals as production units: Growing meat in a laboratory doesn't have the positive impacts of pasturing livestock. It doesn't improve the soil as a carbon sink, which pasturing does. It doesn't increase biodiversity, produce manure for fields or gas for the ingredients of biofuels. [. . .] Lab meat can be a disgusting thought to many, and they will switch to eating vegetables, which in turn calls for more fields and arable land. This will weaken carbon bonding in the soil and reduce the number of natural species. Remember too, lab meat doesn't produce leather for shoes or watch straps, it doesn't warm its own production facilities, it doesn't even produce milk. Therefore, it seems to be a poor substitute for bovine animals. (Commenter) Several commenters stressed that cultured meat was not needed to solve the environmental problems caused by the conventional meat industry. They thought it would be enough if people merely reduced their meat consumption to environmentally sustainable and nutritionally healthy levels. However, they did not elaborate on how this transformation to more sustainable diets should take place.
When addressing the environmental problems of conventional meat production, several commenters shifted the focus from eating meat to global population growth: "No hocuspocus tricks will help if the global population growth is not controlled" (Commenter). They acknowledged the environmental problems caused by conventional meat production but emphasized that cultured meat was an insignificant solution in the long term. They considered cultured meat a temporary fix for environmental problems: The size of the human population is the reason for the climate problem. Moreover, not only for the climate problem, but also for the problem of society's supporting structures. These will collapse long before the climate does. [. . .] Laboratory meat won't solve these problems when we have a population of 15 billion. If lab meat tastes good enough in comparison to proper bone-in meat, it'll certainly find markets [. . .] It won't eliminate the problem, just postpone it by a couple of years -if we're lucky. (Commenter) Cultured meat was also perceived as potentially accelerating the global population growth when massively available at a cheap price. Some commenters suggested that replacing conventionally produced meat with cultured meat could help fight climate change and the planet's ecocatastrophe but stressed that other actions were also needed.

Cultured meat and farmed animals
The commenters assigned a variety of meanings to farmed animals to evaluate the necessity of cultured meat. The reduction of animal suffering was an often-stated reason for justifying cultured meat: The massively huge problem, on which people always remain strictly silent, is that livestock is terribly mistreated. Their lives are nothing but horror, paralysis and captivity. When the treatment of farmed animals becomes further industrialised, it will mean a holocaust for them. The production of artificial meat is much more ethical than the current process. It has to be hurried from this perspective. (Commenter) Cultured meat was also perceived as an innovative product that would advance the moral development of societies and humanity to respect animals and the environment. Almost all the commenters who reported following a vegetarian or vegan diet considered cultured meat unnecessary. It was perceived as being unsuitable for a vegetarian diet because it was still animal meat. Meat-eaters also contested it. However, one positively inclined commenter suggested that the idea of what is acceptable as edible meat may change in the future: Excellent development! It's just a question of getting accustomed to novel things, does food need to be a once-alive animal, and this emotional reaction is fed by advertising that shows naturalness and happy animals on pasturelands and cheerful chickens pecking seeds. Pork and poultry farming in particular involve terrible animal cruelty. I'm not a vegetarian, but I will not accept a deliberately mistreated animal on my plate, so I don't buy meat from a superstore. Artificial meat and impossible burgers are very welcome alternatives! (Commenter) A commenter drawing from the opposite argument wrote that nothing is wrong with conventional animal farming as it has no ethical problems: I don't perceive animal-derived foods as ethically problematic. These continuous experiences of distress are purely the Disney religion of the modern people. Some are more sensitive than others, but nowadays hypersensitivity and its related theatricality tend to be fashionable. (Commenter) Some commenters presumed that replacing intensive animal meat production with cultured meat production would be unfair to farmed animals because they are dependent on humans, and without the traditional meat industry, these animals would vanish for good. These commenters regarded arguments that promoted animal wellbeing by ending livestock farming as contradictory. "After death non-existence" (Commenter) and the extinction of farmed animals was perceived as an ethically dubious outcome of cultured meat development. These commenters suggested that the lives of farmed animals are still worth living even if they involve significant suffering. Previous studies have also addressed this kind of ethical objection to cultured meat (Hopkins and Dacey 2008). Schaefer and Savulescu (2014) noted that the validity of the argument varies depending on the type of farming practices that are replaced by cultured meat. Some farming methods may be more able to offer better living conditions and allow species-specific behavior for farmed animals than others. Cultured meat is proposed as an alternative to factory farming, which is known to cause significant stress and suffering to animals. Schaefer and Savulescu (2014) rejected the ethical reasoning that larger numbers of animal lives with excessive suffering would be better than fewer lives with relatively higher levels of wellbeing.

Nutritional and health reasons for consuming meat
The third theme that the commenters utilized for justifying cultured meat was the necessity of meat for human beings. Most of the commenters who identified themselves as vegetarians or vegans perceived cultured meat as a useless product because humans do not need meat, and cultured meat would probably possess the same unhealthy characteristics as conventionally produced meat. According to these commenters, environmental challenges and animal wellbeing could be sufficiently addressed if all meat production and consumption was swapped for plant kingdom products. Another commenter defended conventionally produced meat by arguing its nutritious qualities: A human being can't survive on only vegetable-based food. We need foods of animal origin to survive. It's stupid to conceal the facts and define this natural need as 'a nice habit' of eating meat [. . .] Good living conditions for animals and proper guides on how much meat is needed for well-balanced nutrition [. . .] Vegetables as vegetables and meat as meat, and no artificial 'meat-vegetable-patties'. (Commenter) According to the commenters who favored cultured meat, intensive livestock production cannot continue in its accustomed form. Their main argument in favor of meat was that people need meat for its nutritional value. Purely vegetable foods were contested, as they were perceived as both dysfunctional in terms of nutritional content and an unrealistic alternative which, in turn, was justified by referring to human evolution and a biological preference for meat and its taste: Artificial meat is outstanding! The global population could be doubled and already fed by now if we abandoned all meat production, but it's not on the horizon. Because the power of biological drives is so strong, we must successfully avoid the ecocatastrophe and develop the taste and mouthfeel. Products of the plant kingdom are fine to a certain extent, but it seems that past a certain point, they're not good enough. This is why we need artificial meat. (Commenter) Some of the commenters indicated that humankind was "born" carnivore during evolution. Another reason stated was that humans are gastronomists and will therefore always choose the most delicious option available. Cultured meat was perceived as an environmentally and animal-ethically better option to conventional meat, especially for those who cannot obtain all the required nutrients from plant kingdom products due to health-based special diets. Some of the commenters emphasized that they suffered from celiac disease and conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome or iron deficiency anemia, which limit the number of plant proteins in their diet. One wanted to give up eating meat for ethical reasons, but felt this was impossible because of their symptoms and dietary restrictions: Take my word for it; we need alternatives [for conventionally produced meat]. It's not always a question of taste preferences. I try to come up with ideas to eat more ethically, but my food restrictions make it hard. I suffer from allergies and irritable bowel syndrome. I would like to switch to beans and other protein-rich plants, I even like their taste, but my stomach won't tolerate them. Surely, I'm not an unusual case. I've discussed this matter with others, and many have the same problem. If artificial meat is reasonably priced and available in supermarkets in the future, I'll definitely buy it. (Commenter) These justifications mirror prior research results which show that eating meat is rationalized as normal, natural, nice, and necessary (Piazza et al. 2015). However, some commenters disagreed on these themes and presented ambiguous arguments for or against cultured meat.

Naturalness and authenticity of cultured meat
The commenters presented varying perceptions of the naturalness and authenticity of cultured meat. Acceptability was debated and cultured meat was often considered unnatural, artificial and a low-quality meat substitute. Cultured meat tended to contradict the ideal perceptions of authentic, real food: Which one is better [plant-based alternatives or cultured meat] than authentic, high-quality meat? I eat only high-quality food prepared from real ingredients. It doesn't include processed meat or plant foods let alone substitutes of any sort. Me at least, I want to eat real meat in the future. (Commenter) Conceptions of naturalness were connected to moral issues. The following comment expresses that cell culturing is morally wrong because humans are reworking nature and life beyond appropriate limits: It's already quite sickening, this manipulation of life. It would be much nicer to eat good plant proteins instead of animal meat. Normal nutrition and botanical education in schools, together with other natural knowledge, would enable people to make correct choices instead of this ongoing madness. In my opinion, a test tube hamburger is the wrong direction of development. (Commenter) Activities perceived as morally wrong and unnatural may induce feelings of aversion. Products such as cultured meat are often subjected to moral evaluation (Goodwin and Shoulders 2013;. The negative comments in our data were associated with nontransparent production in suspicious laboratories, factories and other atypical facilities that deviate from the idealistic views of food production. Thoughts of producing meat in these unorthodox environments aroused feelings of disgust amongst the commenters: I wouldn't eat cloned products. I prefer meat produced in my own village, which I buy straight from farms. It [cultured meat] is just so irrational and sick. They can grow as much of that meat and skin in their laboratories as they want, and mostly for medical purposes. The reactions of disgust described above seem to be intrinsic, and the commenters may not even be aware of their reasons for reacting in this way. One positively inclined commenter wrote that although they endorsed the idea of cultured meat, they still felt unexplainable feelings of disgust: I assume that [cultured meat] is eco-friendlier than conventionally produced meat and no conscious being has suffered during its production, so why not? But somehow, it's intuitively disgusting, although I suppose I'd adapt to the thought, because it's a better option for the climate and more ethical. I just can't justify by any rational means, how this would somehow be more disgusting than any meat acquired by slaughtering an animal. (Commenter) Some commenters contested the concepts of artificiality and the shadowed unnatural status of cultured meat. Some of them suggested that cultured meat was the same as conventionally produced meat, except for its production method. This notion was justified by claiming that the biological composition of cultured meat was similar to that of conventional meat: This product [cultured meat] is 100% meat and when produced correctly, it's impossible to distinguish it on any level from meat that came straight from a cow. (Commenter) The commenters who regarded cultured meat as similar to conventional meat also perceived it as equally natural. The next commenter opposes the justifications above that condemn cell cultivation for interfering with the processes of nature. They do not consider cell-culturing technologies unnatural, because cells' biological processes are ultimately natural themselves: Nobody is interfering with the actions of Mother Nature. Stem cells shape themselves similarly to their assigned tasks in a body, and Mother Nature does exactly the same, the difference in this case is just the growth medium. (Commenter) It was also pointed out that human beings have modified their current lifestyles in many ways and made them artificial or synthetic. The next commenter remarks that naturalness is merely a mental construction, and that cultured meat is an example of the opportunities that culturing cells present for the future: Synthetic meat will probably become a higher-quality, cheaper option to real meat. So, I don't see why people oppose it. All aspects of human living are heading in the synthetic direction at an increasing speed, so supporting the organic movement is just about keeping up appearances. (Commenter) Some commenters similarly challenged the opposition to cultured meat and questioned the arguments that naturalness benefits the environment. Another commenter pointed out that people happily drink D-vitamin enhanced UHT milk, eat meat from vaccinated and bred animals, and enjoy grain products grown with pesticides, which in their opinion were no more natural than cultured meat. The commenter called for self-reflection and asked which is more important, the apparent naturalness of food production or that food production is sustainable.

Health risks and benefits of cultured meat
A notable proportion of the commenters were concerned about the potential health risks of cultured meat, as they anticipated it would pose the same problems as conventionally produced meat: I don't know what its [cultured meat] composition will be, but it's bound to have some negative impact. So, what sense does it make? If eating meat has negative consequences, you should consider beans and other pulses, which are also health-promoting foods. (Commenter) In line with the above commenter, several others also proposed favoring plant-based foods if meat consumption was a concern. Again, the commenters failed to argue how plant-based options could be regularized as a mainstream diet. Although switching to plant-based diets would resolve most of the negative consequences of eating animal-based foods, most consumers do not seem to prefer this apparently perfect solution. Unknown health hazards and the risk of cancer were also mentioned. One commenter suspected that as processed foods tend to cause health problems, dangerous issues would not be discovered until years after cultured meat has been consumed: Processed foods already cause health problems and I think that switching over to cultured meat and other synthetic foods would increase them. I wouldn't be surprised if colon cancer boomed with these goings-on. (Commenter) Interestingly, some of the commenters characterized cultured meat grown in laboratory conditions as being too clean. They anticipated that cultured meat would probably lack the health-promoting micro-organisms found in conventionally produced meat. In this context, and in relation to the naturalness debate, an appropriate level of "dirtiness" in food was perceived healthy and natural: My assessment is that a serious health hazard resides in these [cultured meat products]. The cleaner food is, that is, the more processed and further away from natural production it is, the unhealthier it is. A human being needs dirty food or ingredients that have a suitable microbe strain. The importance of microbes for human wellbeing is only just being understood and novel research results regarding the harms of processed foods are increasingly being published. (Commenter) Ditlevsen and Andersen (2021) describe this phenomenon as the new paradigm of naturalness that prevails among consumers. In the context of food, a certain degree of dirtiness is considered natural and healthy, while conversely, excessive cleanliness and sterility are perceived as unnatural with potentially dangerous implications for human health.
The opposite perspective anticipated that cultured meat would be healthier and safer than conventionally produced meat. The commenters suggested that cultured meat would not contain the medications and hormones they claimed were extensively utilized in the conventional meat industry. One commenter expressed that cultured meat could be better than conventional meat in terms of healthiness and nourishment: In practice, artificial meat is muscle cells that are divided in a growth medium [. . .] It has as much animal origin as any other meat, but to produce it you don't need to raise an animal whose most parts don't end up as human food (bones, leather, intestines, brains, most internal organs). It also lacks medication and hormone residues. It's better nourishment than the meat we now eat. (Commenter)

Expected sensory qualities of cultured meat
Consumer acceptance studies have shown that people's attitudes toward cultured meat are dependent on a multitude of factors Barnett 2018, 2020). The online discussions speculated on the anticipated sensory qualities of cultured meat, such as taste and texture, usually comparing them with the characteristics of conventionally produced meat. Product appearance was also perceived as an important attribute of cultured meat. The tone of the comments was skeptical. The commenters believed that no manmade substitute could compete with superior conventionally produced meat: If meat production has to be limited, this should definitely be done by improving quality. Nowadays the meat on the market is truly low-quality stuff. It's hard to believe that laboratory meat offers a solution for good quality. For now, all the efforts to imitate the real thing have been total catastrophes, at least in the gastronomic sense. (Commenter) The more optimistic commenters believed that if cultured meat could match conventional meat, it would be accepted by consumers: "I'll switch to artificial meat immediately when its taste, texture and price are close to those of real meat" (Commenter). Another commenter put it differently: Whatever the product, only taste can change food preferences. People with high ideals are a completely different story. The globe will not be saved by the vege-believers, there are too few of them. The production of cultured meat will be the winner if it succeeds in two things. Taste and appearance. Even if a suspicious-looking pulp tastes just like meat, people won't eat it. (Commenter) The commenters also had opposite perceptions of the pleasantness of meat. Some of them explained that they were not excited about cultured meat because they did not like the taste of meat in general: Well, not everyone likes meat. I won't eat cultured meat either if it someday appears on the market. I seldom buy expensive Härkis or Pulled oats [Finnish plant-based alternative product brands], but I wouldn't buy them at all if they resembled meat. Quite an absurd idea indeed to try to copy the bad tasting muscle mass of a dead animal by making its appearance disgusting too. (Commenter) The commenters' descriptions of the anticipated characteristics of cultured meat were rich in detail. They specified not only the extrinsic characteristics of cultured meat such as perceived naturalness, healthiness, potential risks, and price, but also intrinsic qualities such as taste, texture, and appearance, and compared these with those of existing food products.

Experts and media as biased actors
In addition to questioning whether cultured meat is needed and addressing its expected characteristics, the commenters outlined the broader social consequences or potential impacts of cultured meat. Some anticipated that cultured meat would have the most positive impact on the bank accounts of the companies and researchers developing these novel products. They suspected researchers and cultured meat company representatives of having dishonest motives. Some commenters believed that these stakeholders were driven by profit-seeking and individual benefits rather than environmental or ethical values: "We trust plants. More than an industrialist cranking out artificial meat" (Commenter).
Researchers and companies developing cultured meat were also criticized for failing to provide a truthful view of the environmental impacts. The media reporting on cultured meat also received its share of criticism. Some of the commenters claimed that the news coverage was biased: So, they ask for the opinions of entrepreneurs [of cultured meat] and their statements are presented as 'scientific' knowledge? So much for that journalism . . . (Commenter) Another commenter compared the situation in which the media only presents the positive sides of novel technologies to the era of green revolution in agriculture (e.g., Pingali 2012): This news story has purposefully, once again, forgotten the most fundamental factor of having an impact on the success of laboratory food [. . .] Where will those massive amounts of 'inputs' or sugars for tissue cultures be produced, and mineral substances and traces? It's the same thing as praising cows without saying that they need to be fed or having no idea of how to deal with manure. What about emissions? [. . .] Why is this naivety maintained? Innovations are needed, but neither we nor our environment can afford to be deceived. During the green revolution, people blindly praised novel chemicals, but the force behind it was made up of eager researchers and companies desperately needing money and markets for their novel products. Nowadays, this same uncritical but trendy approach to issues perceived as good, such as laboratory food and recycled fertilisers, is being repeated in the media. (Commenter) Some of the commenters expressed that the efforts of cultured meat developers and new areas of expertise could be beneficial for the economic growth and wellbeing of the country. The next comment contemplates the possible economic benefits of cultured meat for society: Why are novel businesses treated so negatively here? Aren't profitable business activities a good thing? [. . .] Moreover, cost-effective business creates employment and good in general. (Commenter) Some of the commenters also welcomed novel expertise and laboratories that grow meat to Finland, displaying support for these potential domestic future businesses that could extend the operations of the current food system. Most of the negative comments were primarily fueled by distrust of researchers, company representatives, and journalists.
Although the media presents cultured meat transparently and on the basis of scientific facts, building a trustful relationship with certain groups of people might be a challenging task due to suspicion of novel foods.

Decision-making in the food system
Decision-making within the food system, particularly regarding cultured meat, raised various concerns amongst the commenters. Some of them changed the focus and opposed state-level banning or the prohibition of conventionally produced meat, which they perceived as a potential negative consequence or threat that may arise from developing cultured meat. One interpretation is that these commenters believe that the State should not make decisions on behalf of people on such a subjective matter as what to eat: Here again we have the big scourge of our times: 'let's ban it'. Exactly this passion and expectation for getting something banned will result in a counter-reaction. Many could be more open to novel issues if this wasn't the all-embracing solution. After all, the individual freedom to make your own decisions makes anything worth something. When the selfpromoted nomenclature tries to dictate to others how to live and act, a fundamental answer arises in my mind, not against this issue in particular [banning of conventionally produced meat] but against this bunch of banners. (Commenter) A news article presenting cultured meat to the audiences may turn into a heated debate about banning other food products such as conventionally produced meat. Other commenters approached the decision-making processes related to cultured meat more trustingly. Whatever the decisions were or regardless of the level of the resolutions, one commenter believed that decisions would be made in a democratic manner: Capitalism has nothing to do with eating meat. If conventionally produced meat was banned, it would be a democratic decision, a legislative process, which would be realised by representatives chosen by the people. Then, there would be demand for artificial meat.
The commenters did not question whether cultured meat was subject to license or whether there would be any regulative actions. Instead, they were opposed to banning or punishing the conventional meat industry. One commenter drew the opposite conclusion; it is not possible to produce cultured meat in the current market economy system. They explained this by claiming that the clearly cheaper price of conventionally produced meat could not be beaten in the current market situation: "In capitalism, the idea that this artificial meat would never replace conventionally produced meat is incorrect, because real meat will always be cheaper to produce" (Commenter). Potential solutions for accelerating cultured meat development and production, such as tax relief, were also presented: The pace of this development [cultured meat] could be significantly accelerated by taxation. Tax cuts in the industry and to its products or even tax exemptions would probably be worth considering, as the goals are surprisingly consistent with the current, increasingly common political efforts. It remains to be seen which country will be brave enough to embrace the future first and be a pioneer. (Commenter) Evaluation of the political or policy processes and food regulation processes were hardly mentioned in the data. Some commenters opposed cultured meat on the grounds of preserving the conventional meat sector or trusting decisions-makers to make democratic, fair choices that would serve the rights of the people. However, one commenter pointed out that politicians might not have up-to-date knowledge or competence to evaluate recent developments in cellular agriculture.

Inequity of stakeholders and regions
The commenters also wondered whether the development of cultured meat would benefit or undermine various stakeholder groups. Employment in the agricultural sector and people's livelihoods in rural areas in particular were perceived as being on the losing side: "Agriculture and entrepreneurship in remote areas will confront extinction" (Commenter). Another commenter pondered the potential structural changes in societies: "Here again, we'll have a crucial structural change if meat production from stem cells is cheaper than animal husbandry." However, another commenter anticipated that expanding laboratories that produced cultured meat would require an increasing number of skillful, highly educated workers: What will happen to jobs? [. . .] I suppose laboratories will offer good work opportunities. [. . .] In that case, workplaces will not be maintained just for the sake of it, but on a needs basis. There are good reasons why we don't have people at factories for each little task, as machines do the work better. We can release the workforce for something more important. (Commenter) Several commenters were concerned about the potential impacts of the emerging cultured meat industry for rural areas. According to these commenters, small producers already found it hard to compete with large-scale enterprises specialized in complex food technologies. Cultured meat companies were compared to companies utilizing gene technologies such as the crop corporate giant Monsanto (acquisitioned by Bayer AG in 2018). One of these commenters feared that similar massive companies would not be regulated: Here we can see the maximal hate of rural areas and the glorification of the industrial production system [. . .] It's clear that many of today's cultivation method winners are like Monsanto, not the poor farmer working 24/7. It's the same here. How to control this future Monster-Monsanto? Human beings are rushing blindly towards capital-intensive industrial production and at the same time, small producers are being hit with accusations of being wrong and unreasonable. (Commenter) This comment echoes the question "who will control cultured meat production in the future?" The commenter anticipated that cultured meat would accelerate the centralization of food production in big multinational companies, and that small farmers would lose the race. Previous studies have identified and discussed similar concerns about the lack of regulation of food production and the concentration of power in the hands of large multinational companies (Laestadius and Caldwell 2015;Bryant and Barnett 2018;Verbeke, Marcu et al. 2015;Chiles et al. 2021). Another commenter was more trusting and believed that the State would participate in decently and fairly solving the challenges of the conventional meat industry: There will probably be some difficulties transforming barns into artificial meat laboratories. How to arrange subsidies for these? Some barn and slaughterhouse workers would become unemployed, but the Finnish labour policy has managed to handle these situations before. (Commenter)

Emerging meaning system for cultured meat
In this article, we have outlined the emerging meaning system for cultured meat represented in naturally occurring online comments of Finnish media audiences. These public discussions seem to be shaping the acceptance of cultured meat even before the product is on the market. The developers and advocates of cultured meat construct positive meanings for the product, which the news media repeats. However, the public is also participating in the construction of the meaning system of cultured meat, as we have demonstrated through our analysis of online news comments.
The commenters' perceptions of cultured meat were ambiguous and polarized, which prior studies have also observed (Laestadius 2015;Laestadius and Caldwell 2015). The commenters in our data tried to comprehend the new food technology by examining it from three different angles: 1) why it is needed, 2) what its product characteristics are, and 3) imagining its possible societal effects. The necessity of cultured meat was pondered in terms of the environment, animal wellbeing, and health and nutrition. The potential characteristics of cultured meat were evaluated through perceptions of its naturalness, potential health risks and benefits, and sensory qualities. Finally, the societal meanings and consequences of cultured meat were evaluated by considering the motives of the actors involved in the cultured meat discourses, the future decision-making regarding cultured meat, and questions of social justice and inequity. All the nine identified sub-themes were utilized in arguments both for and against cultured meat, depending on the position of the commenter. Appendix B summarizes the data structure.
Although online comments about cultured meat can be considered individual opinions, these written accounts are grounded in the socially and culturally shared meanings of food. The online commenters made sense of cultured meat by comparing it with more familiar products such as conventionally produced meat, available plant-based alternatives, genetically modified foods, and artificial organs produced by medical cell culturing technologies. They contrasted cultured meat with the innovations of biotechnology, which seemed alien to their ideal perceptions of food. Novel food technologies are socially and culturally contested and contrasted with familiar products; as novelties, they attempt to fit in with extant meaning systems. Contrasting novel foods with familiar contexts is a human practice for sorting out the undefined , as is utilizing analogies and metaphors , and choosing nomenclature, which affects the categories with which the product is associated (Bryant & Barnett, 2019).
Some people defined cultured meat as resembling conventional meat in its cellular consistence, while others thought its production method made it too strange and dangerous for consumption. Perceptions of naturalness were often at the core of these debates, and the ways in which people define and understand naturalness tend to influence their opinions on cultured meat. We found that the conceptions of the unnaturalness of cultured meat were closely linked to the perceptions of its artificiality, immorality, and health risks, validating the results of prior studies (Laestadius 2015;Siegrist and Sütterlin 2017).
For some people, cultured meat appeared "too clean" to be healthy, which extant research has addressed to a lesser extent. For these commenters, the production of cultured meat in a laboratory was too unconventional to be natural, and they anticipated that a highly controlled and sterile production method would create a product that lacked the healthy micro-organisms of conventional meat. Our observation supports Ditlevsen's and Andersen's (2021) argument that in the context of food, slight "dirtiness" has become a sign of purity, naturalness and healthiness. In this regard, using the term "clean meat" for cultured meat may hinder consumer acceptance.
Those who were more positive toward cultured meat believed it was as natural as any other meat because natural processes still occurred on the cellular level. Alternatively, they questioned the concept of naturalness and pointed out the controversy of deeming cultured meat more unnatural than other products of current industrial agriculture.
The tone of people's comments ranged from anticipatorily positive to fearfully pessimistic, but the majority held a negative stance toward cultured meat, reflecting the results of previous consumer studies (Laestadius and Caldwell 2015;Marcu et al. 2015;Verbeke, Marcu et al. 2015;Bryant and Barnett 2018). Negative responses have been associated with people's unfamiliarity with cultured meat and a lack of information about the product. Recent consumer acceptance studies of cultured meat have stated that providing more information on the product has resulted in greater interest and acceptance, and information about possible individual level benefits, especially health benefits, may be more persuasive than other types of benefits of cultured meat Bryant, van Nek, and Rolland 2020). Special attention should be paid to testing and assuring the healthiness of cultured meat and transparently communicating it to build public trust and acceptance.
Cultured meat appeared to be alien to many of the online news commenters. Integrating it with the meaning systems of food may cause a challenge that should not be underestimated. Adopting a new food product may be easier if it resembles familiar foods. If the public interprets cultured meat as unfit according to the conventional categories of acceptable food, it may become "matter out of place" (Douglas 1966).
Online commenters in prior studies have addressed cultured meat in relation to animal welfare; environmental protection and sustainability; the advancement of science, equity and fairness; preserving naturalness in the food system; and using resources to maximize social benefits (Laestadius 2015;Laestadius and Caldwell 2015). In addition to these themes, in our study we also observed the notions of anticipated sensory experiences, the evaluations and decision-making of potentially biased actors regarding the food system level. It was suspected that the production of cultured meat would negatively influence employment in the conventional agricultural sector and in rural areas, a common concern also identified in other recent studies (Burton 2019; Shaw and Mac Con Iomaire 2019; Helliwell and Burton 2021; Newton and Blaustein-Rejto 2021; Moritz et al., 2022). These are the singular themes of which the developers of cultured meat and policymakers should be aware and expect to encounter when the product approaches finalization and market launch.
A theme that emerged in our data that has also been identified in earlier studies to a certain extent (Laestadius and Caldwell 2015;Verbeke, Marcu et al. 2015;Bryant and Barnett 2018) is power in the future food systems of cultured meat. Some Finnish online news commenters were concerned about food production becoming concentrated in the hands of large multinational companies and wondered who would regulate cultured meat. Chiles et al. (2021) and Mohorčich and Reese (2019) anticipate that the concentration of cultured meat production in a few large companies is a likely scenario, because such a young industry is dependent on funding from mainstream private financial structures.
The media work as a public arena for the ontological struggles over the nature of cultured meat (Dilworth and McGregor 2015). The media storylines presenting cultured meat to the public influence the content of online comments, as they are partly responses to media reporting. The results of studies of the media coverage of cultured meat have recently been framed as mostly positive (Painter, Brennen, and Kristiansen 2020), deviating from earlier framings that stressed the unnaturalness and unpleasantness of cultured meat and the aversion to it (Dilworth and McGregor 2015). A positive tone was also noticeable in recent Finnish news articles and in our data, but the commenters' tones were mainly negative. Some commenters criticized the media as well as experts for biased reporting on the benefits of cultured meat. This may be due to the fact that cellular agriculture companies have attracted substantial amounts of private funding (Stephens, Sexton, and Driessen 2019) and because the sources of information that the media tend to use are cellular agriculture developers and scholars, as well as non-governmental organizations operating in the field (Goodwin and Shoulders 2013).
The negative or anti-cultured meat comments also tended to be reactionary. The informants shifted the focus from cultured meat to the fact that people should eat less meat from animals or switch to plant-based diets. Another tactic they employed was to defend heavily conventional meat production despite the media item showcasing the potential benefits of cultured meat. Yet another approach was to downplay the benefits of cultured meat by emphasizing more important challenges that humanity should resolve, such as global population growth or the increasing usage of fossil fuels. These observations suggest that transparent, balanced media reporting might not prevent overtly negative comments from media audiences.

Limitations of the study and avenues for further research
Due to the qualitative approach utilized and the convenience sampling of the data, we cannot statistically generalize the results to a particular population. The data consisted of online comments that were based on or responses to a limited amount of news articles, which in turn steered the content of these comments. In addition, the commenters were the people most likely to be interested in food trends, as they followed media reporting and were able to and interested in sharing their perceptions online. The comments expressed rather polarized opinions about cultured meat, which may imply that only people with stronger opinions are eager to comment on the subject. Moreover, merely analyzing anonymous online comments does not permit us to examine the informants' demographics. A representative, quantitative study examining people's perceptions of cellular agriculture and the related meaning systems could provide novel insights beyond this study.
The data were collected from Finnish media outlets. Although the media publicity of cultured meat tends to be international, the transferability of the results to other contexts may be limited. Moreover, the media publicity of cultured meat is rather restricted in Finland and the country does not yet have any companies that develop cultured meat. Further research is needed on how perceptions change over time and under the influence of the meaning systems of food, but even more so on whether the presented emerging meaning system for cultured meat is global or varies according to region. In addition, the data are based on a situation in which cultured meat is not yet on the market: the meaning system of cultured meat might be constructed differently after the product is more familiar and available.
Consumer perceptions and ethical concerns about cultured meat have already been studied to a certain extent, but future studies could address people's visions of cellular agriculture product categories other than cultured meat. Future research could also benefit from collecting qualitative data sets other than online comments, as these could shed light on other aspects of the meaning system of food and therefore extend the findings of this study.

Conclusions
The online comments on cultured meat addressed nine themes: environmental issues, farmed animal wellbeing, health and nutritional considerations, naturalness and the potential risks associated with cultured meat, sensory qualities, the role of biased actors, decision-making in the food system, and inequity issues. These themes illustrate how the media audiences perceive cultured meat from their perspective and express this in their own words. The results suggest that the emerging meaning system is based on three contested categories that are utilized to negotiate the meanings of cultured meat products in contrast with the existing food system. These categories are based on the questions: 1) Why is cultured meat necessary? 2) What are the expected product characteristics? and 3) How, from the commenters' perspective, is cultured meat expected to impact societies?
If cultured meat becomes one of the potential protein alternatives for mitigating the well-known challenges to factory livestock production, there is a risk that the technology will encounter a backlash and opposition campaigns such as GMO foods encountered in the EU. The public's critique, concerns and expectations should be addressed early in the process of developing cultured meat. Our research contributed to these discussions by exploring different types of public perceptions of cultured meat and by outlining its emerging meaning system. We argue that ignoring the uncertainties and concerns of the public may risk the emergence of conflicting interpretations. This may potentially prevent the achievement of a shared, robust meaning system of cultured meat and complicate the establishment of cultured meat as an accepted and edible food in Western food customs. We suggest that addressing these uncertainties may enable more cohesive interpretations of cultured meat and increase its adoption.

Notes
1. Press release,December1. 2020: Eat Just Granted World's First Regulatory Approval for Cultured Meat (https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201201006251/en/) 2. YLE, 18.12.2020 "Would you give up your car and meat for the climate?"; HS, 3.1.2021 "Food revolution"; YLE, 2.3.2021 "Beef steak of the future grows in a petri dish instead of a barn"; YLE, 19.2.2021 "The skill of empathy is worth training, also in relation to animals"; HS, 12.5.2021 "Cellular agriculture will transform our food"; YLE, 13.5.2021 "Livestock economy is a ticking timebomb of the climate crisis". 3. HS, 25.2.2021 "GMO food arouses suspicions"; YLE, 10.2.2021 "What will be the destiny of the hamburger, sushi and beer?"; YLE, 2.3.2021a "If you could eat any animal, who would you eat? I started with myself"; YLE, 2.3.2021b "Will you be growing beef in a home laboratory in the future?".