essay prompts for lamb to the slaughter

Lamb To The Slaughter

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Discussion Questions

How does Dahl establish an atmosphere of domestic calm at the opening of the story? What clues does he give that the harmonious mood is soon to be shattered? Make reference to foreshadowing in your answer.

Describe the relationship between Mary and her husband. How does their marriage reflect the values of 1950s society? What is the author’s overall message about traditionally assigned gender roles?

What impression does the reader have of Mary Maloney at the beginning of “Lamb to the Slaughter”? How does that perception change as the story progresses? Cite evidence from the text to support your answer.

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Lamb to the Slaughter Essay Topics & Writing Assignments

Essay Topic 1

Define “black comedy” and discuss how black comedy applies to the story “Lamb to the Slaughter.” What elements in the story are funny? Why are they funny? Do you think the author intends for the reader to find the story humorous or frightening?

Essay Topic 2

Describe the setting of “Lamb to the Slaughter” and the time period in which the short story was published. What literary movements took hold in America and Europe during the Post-War period? What qualities defined these movements? How is the setting of the 1950s evident in the story?

Essay Topic 3

Define “narrative point of view” and discuss the point of view of “Lamb to the Slaughter.” Is the story related in the past, present or future tense? Is the story told from a first, second, or third person point of view? How limited is the narrator’s perspective? Why do you...

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Activities for Teaching Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl

Secondary Literacy , Short Stories

“ Lamb to the Slaughter ” is a timeless classic. Roald Dahl’s brilliant short story uncovers a plot that is equal parts suspenseful and darkly humorous. Set in what appears to be an ordinary domestic scene, Dahl masterfully weaves a tale of deception , revenge , and unexpected twists. There is no shortage of activities for teaching “Lamb to the Slaughter” in your classroom.

This short story is sure to engage your students and leave them with plenty to discuss. It’s also a great option for teaching irony , making inferences , and exploring characterization . If you’ve never taught “ Lamb to the Slaughter ” before, prepare to have students at the edge of their seats!

What is “Lamb to the Slaughter” About?

When a devoted housewife receives startling news from her husband, this seemingly congenial story takes a dark and unexpected twist. Roald Dahl’s scary short story is a tale of ingenuity and the ironies of justice. With a weapon as unusual as it is ordinary, Dahl masterfully uncovers the thin line between love and vengeance. Your students will learn that there’s more that meets the eye after reading this eerie classic!

The story revolves around the protagonist, Mary Maloney – a traditional housewife with less conventional problem-solving skills. Unforeseen events suddenly disrupt Mary’s world, leaving her with a lot on her plate. As the narrative progresses, a profound transformation takes place, reshaping the course of her life. Dahl’s masterful storytelling skillfully navigates themes of tension , suspense , and human nature . It offers students a gripping and thought-provoking exploration of the character development and plot twists.

What age is “Lamb to the Slaughter” suitable for?

“ Lamb to the Slaughter ” is just about 4000 words in length. With a Lexile level of 780 , this scary short story is suitable for sophomores , freshmen , and even students in upper middle school .

If you teach senior-level high school students, “Lamb to the Slaughter” is still a valuable short story for your classroom. Students with a mature understanding of the culture of domesticity will have a lot to unpack from the story. Students can practice argumentative writing through exploring the motivations of Mary Maloney using these essay prompts .

It is important to note that “Lamb to the Slaughter” is a short story that implies a fair bit of violence. Although the events of the story are intended to be interpreted on a symbolic level, these events may be unsettling for some students. Educators should exercise discretion and consider the maturity and sensitivity of their students when choosing to include this story in a classroom curriculum.

What is the main lesson of “Lamb to the Slaughter?”

“ Lamb to the Slaughter ” illustrates how seemingly ordinary people can react in extraordinary ways when pushed to their limits. It serves as a commentary on the complexities of human behavior, the unpredictability of life, and the consequences of impulsive actions.

This short story is also a great starting point to exploring more complex concepts like implicit bias , domestic violence , and the criminal justice system .

Activities for teaching “Lamb to the Slaughter”

When it comes to short stories, I like to dig deeper into the themes and ideas that arise. Short stories provide a lot of value to the classroom because they spark engagement without assigning too much reading for homework. The other benefit of short stories is that they provide a less intimidating text to encourage close reading . I like to spend at least a week teaching “Lamb to the Slaughter” – sometimes even two. This offers students the opportunity to really master the text and revisit it enough to gain a deeper understanding. 

Here are my favourite lessons and activities for teaching “Lamb to the Slaughter” :

1. Practicing Making Inferences

What is remarkable about this short story is how much of it is told between the lines.  Students will have to make inferences about this story regardless of whether you prompt them to or not. In order to come to grips with the central event of the story, they’ll have to make conclusions based on the clues provided by the author.

I like to use this learning opportunity to teach students about making inferences. This gr aphic organizer will prompt students to make inferences and dive deeper into an analysis of Roald Dahl’s “Lamb to the Slaughter.”  Students will be challenged to analyze evidence from the text to provide both a literal evaluation and an inference about the interpretive meaning of each quote.  There are 11 quotations from “Lamb to the Slaughter” in total. Each quotation highlights key moments within the short story. These include the motivations of each character and the missing dialogue between Patrick and Mary.

Your lesson on making inferences can also serve as a pre-reading activity using this informational handout about “Lamb to the Slaughter.”   This handout explains the origins of the title of this short story and prompts students to make predictions about what will happen.  To consolidate this activity, this handout also includes pre-reading and post-reading questions to evaluate Dahl’s choice of title.

The missing dialogue between Patrick and Mary is truly the most mysterious and intriguing aspect of “Lamb to the Slaughter.” My students have had a lot of fun responding to a narrative writing prompt that has them explore the possible exchanges that can fill the void that Dahl creates in this story. This narrative writing assignment is also a great way to consolidate your lesson on making inferences.

2. Exploring Characterization

“ Lamb to the Slaughter ” is an excellent resource for teaching characterization in literature. Through the transformation of the protagonist, the story offers a compelling case study in character development . Educators can guide students in exploring how the author uses direct and indirect characterization techniques to reveal Mary Maloney’s personality, motivations, and internal conflicts. 

By dissecting Mary’s actions, thoughts, and dialogue throughout the story, students can gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of character construction and how authors employ various literary devices to bring characters to life.  

This character analysis informational handout defines characterization and differentiates between direct characterization and indirect characterization .  Students will then be prompted to locate evidence in the text to characterize Mary Maloney, Patrick Maloney, Jack Noonan, and Sam.

Students can organize their evidence from the text in this character analysis graphic organizer .  This graphic organizer prompts students to identify the type of characterization (direct or indirect characterization) and the category of characterization (words, thoughts, appearance, etc.).  Finally, students will also analyze the evidence to offer their interpretation of the character.

3. Identifying Types of Irony

“Lamb to the Slaughter” is one of my favourite stories to use to demonstrate different types of irony . Students can explore how Dahl composes a story in which the title itself takes on a profound irony. As the story unfolds, the seemingly mundane domestic setting is juxtaposed with the shocking events that transpire, providing an ideal backdrop for discussions on this literary device. In addition to this, the unexpected twists in the plot – along with the reactions and perceptions of the characters – offer rich material for exploring dramatic irony.

Analyze Dahl’s brilliant use of irony with this free irony flow chart . This worksheet defines irony and differentiates between dramatic irony , situational irony , and verbal irony .  Students will be prompted to locate evidence in the text to apply examples to teach type of irony. They will also analyze why these examples qualify as ironic.

4. Teaching Argumentative Writing

If you teach older students, they’ll definitely have some fun arguing about the motivations of Mary Maloney . By interpreting her actions on a symbolic level, senior students can even analyze “Lamb to the Slaughter” from a feminist lens, and respond to whether or not Mary is a revolutionary housewife. 

This argumentative writing assignment for “Lamb to the Slaughter” provides three argumentative essay prompts . You can select a single writing prompt to assign to your students, or provide them with the option of student choice.  These prompts assess students on different areas of literary analysis, including figurative language (specifically irony), characterization , and theme .  

For a more experiential approach, you could also host a mock trial for Mary Maloney. This project-based learning opportunity provides differentiated roles for your students. It will help them develop main points and evidence to support their cases. If you have a particularly inquisitive group of students, you can assign them the task of defending Mary Maloney on whatever grounds they can imagine. Temporary insanity or lack of sovereignty are two arguments that can create a compelling case!

Teaching Lamb to the Slaughter: Tying It All Together

There are so many fun lessons and activities for teaching “ Lamb to the Slaughter .” Whether you teach middle school or senior students, there is so much value to be found in this short story. I hope you’ve found this blog post offered you some engaging options! To take your exploration of this classic short story to the next level, make sure to check out this “ Lamb to the Slaughter ” unit from my shop.

Lamb to the Slaughter

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A Summary and Analysis of Roald Dahl’s ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ is a 1953 short story by Roald Dahl (1916-90), which was initially rejected for publication but was later adapted for television on several occasions. Included in Dahl’s collections Someone Like You (1953) and Tales of the Unexpected (1979), the story is about a wife who murders her unfaithful husband with a frozen leg of lamb before hatching a plan to ensure she isn’t caught for her crime.

Before we offer an analysis of ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’, it might be worth recapping the plot of Dahl’s story.

Plot summary

Mary Maloney is waiting at home for her husband, Patrick, to get home from work. He is a detective. She is six months pregnant with their child. When he gets home, she pours them both a drink and notices that Patrick has drained his glass more swiftly than he usually does. He pours himself another whisky before revealing to his wife that he plans to leave her.

Mary is stunned by this revelation, and initially wants to act as though it hasn’t happened. She decides to go and get some food from the freezer that she can cook for their dinner. She finds a leg of lamb in the freezer, and when her husband announces he’s going out, she strikes him on the back of the head with the lamb leg, killing him.

Immediately she starts to think about how to cover her tracks so she won’t be caught. She puts the meat in the oven to cook. After rehearsing what she will say to the nearby grocer, she goes out to his shop and buys some potatoes and peas to go with the roast lamb. When talking to the grocer, Sam, she acts as though everything is all right and her husband is waiting for her back home.

When she returns home, she talks herself into believing her husband is still alive, so she is genuinely shocked when she sees his body lying on the floor. She phones the police to report that he has been murdered, and a group of detectives – who knew Patrick from work – show up to investigate his death.

The detectives make a thorough search of the house, believing that Patrick was murdered by a heavy metal implement. So they search for something that could have been used as the murder weapon. They remain in the house for so long that Mary offers them all a drink. They reluctantly accept and, when she is reminded of the lamb cooking in the oven, she suggests that they eat it since they must be hungry.

Again, they agree, and as they sit around the table eating the leg of lamb which killed their former colleague, they remain oblivious to the fact that they are, in fact, destroying the evidence themselves. In the next room, Mary giggles.

Dahl’s story was suggested by his friend Ian Fleming, who created James Bond. Dahl adapted Fleming’s Bond novel You Only Live Twice for the big screen; he also co-wrote the screenplay for the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang , which was also based on a Fleming novel. And it was Fleming who suggested the idea for ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’, telling his friend that he should write a story about a woman who murders her wife with a leg of mutton (not lamb) which she then serves to the investigating officers.

‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ can be categorised as a horror story (although given the lack of any supernatural element, ‘thriller’ is perhaps a more apposite label), although we should also pay attention to the darkly humorous elements of the tale: features in keeping with Dahl’s writing as a whole.

The story reflects – but then subverts – a common trope of the early 1950s: namely, the wife as the faithful homemaker while the husband goes out to work. At the beginning of ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’, Mary Maloney cannot do enough for her husband, waiting patiently and eagerly for him to arrive home, fetching his drink, asking him about his day.

But when the stability of her world crumbles in a few minutes, when Patrick tells her that he is leaving her (although it isn’t mentioned, we assume he has met someone else), she changes very quickly – and easily – from dutiful wife to cold-blooded murderer.

In other words, once the role she has settled into over the years, that of being ‘Mrs Patrick Maloney’, is taken away from her, she finds herself able to switch in and out of that role with ease. After a brief rehearsal at home, she is able to convince the grocer that she is still the dutiful wife once again: an act she performs again for the policemen.

Dahl makes it clear that she doesn’t murder her husband out of fear of being penniless without the money from him, the breadwinner of the family: he makes it clear he will continue to provide for her financially. Instead, her motive is more complex. Does she kill him out of jealousy or spite, or resentment at having conceived the child of a man who doesn’t even intend to hang around long enough to see it born?

Dahl leaves these questions open for us to discuss. Note how, in the moments preceding that decisive moment when she strikes her husband with the leg of lamb, her movements become automatic, as if she is being guided by some other force. Her unconscious? The concentrated righteous anger of ‘a woman scorned’? Dahl tells us that she ‘simply’ walked up to her husband and struck him with the lamb.

It is as if she is performing some perfunctory task, almost as though the mundane and automatic business of housework has been extrapolated to incorporate the business of murder. She doesn’t appear to lash out in a moment of fury, cold or otherwise. It is almost as if she feels she has no other choice.

There is obviously a grim irony in the method she uses to dispatch her husband. The roast joint cooking in the oven is the symbol par excellence of the good 1950s housewife, feeding her husband after a long day at work. There is also symbolism in the fact that this food, meant to be an offering from wife to husband, is used instead to kill the husband, with the deadly weapon being given instead to a host of other men (who, as policemen, are also stand-ins for the dead husband in some respects).

In the last analysis, then, ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ is a short story about how easily the meek and loving housewife can transform into a cold and calculating killer. It is Mary’s sudden change that makes the story so unsettling, and the lack of remorse she shows for her crime; but her choice of murder weapon and method of disposing of the evidence make this story as much black comedy as out-and-out horror tale.

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Lamb to the Slaughter Writing Assessments - Essay Prompts and Editable Rubrics

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This differentiated assessment offers three different written response options to evaluate students’ understanding of Roald Dahl’s “Lamb to the Slaughter.” Includes editable 4-level rubrics!  Choose between an essay, paragraph, or narrative response using these literary analysis prompts .

Included with these Lamb to the Slaughter Writing Prompts:

✏️ Editable “Lamb to the Slaughter” Assessment Handouts - Google Docs®

✏️ 3 Argumentative Essay Prompts

✏️ 1 Narrative Writing Prompt

✏️ Option for individual writing prompt handouts or student choice

✏️ 4 Editable Rubrics - Google Docs®

• Essay Rubric, Paragraph Rubric, Narrative Rubric, and Universal Rubric

✏️ Teacher Instructions for using this resource

How to use this Lamb to the Slaughter Literary Analysis Activity :

Roald Dahl’s “Lamb to the Slaughter” is a short story that examines identity, preconceived notions, marriage, and betrayal .  Support students in exploring this 20th-century text using this literary analysis assessment .

The written response assessment is differentiated to meet the needs of your unique classroom and offer your students options to reach their learning goals.  

This assessment includes the option to write an argumentative or a narrative response and provides 3 argumentative essay prompts and 1 narrative writing prompt .  You can select a single writing prompt to assign to your students, or provide them with the assessment handout that lists all 4 prompts to offer them student choice.

The argumentative prompts assess students on different areas of literary analysis , including figurative language (irony), characterization, and theme.  Additionally, the narrative writing response assesses students’ ability to make inferences about the short story.

These “Lamb to the Slaughter” assessment handouts are also editable .  You can modify them to add to, omit, or change any of the instructions and prompts provided.

For further differentiation , 4 separate rubrics have been provided.  The first rubric will assess students on a literary analysis essay ; the second a literary analysis paragraph ; the third a narrative response ; the fourth a universal rubric to assess the same skills across all styles of writing.  

Each 4-level rubric has been provided in editable and ready-to-print formats.

To access the editable versions of these resources, simply follow the links within the resource to copy the Google Doc® files directly to your Google Drive® .

This resource is included in Mondays Made Easy's "Lamb to the Slaughter" Literary Analysis Unit , which includes vocabulary activities, pre-reading questions, literary analysis charts, and characterization activities.  To preview this discounted resource, click here .

You might also be interested in Mondays Made Easy's Literary Analysis Resources .

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Home Essay Samples Literature

Essay Samples on Lamb to The Slaughter

“Lamb to The Slaughter” opens with Mary Maloney, a devoted housewife eagerly awaiting her husband’s return from work. However, her idyllic domestic life is shattered when her husband delivers devastating news that sends shockwaves through her world. In a moment of sheer desperation, Mary’s emotions spiral out of control, leading her to commit an impulsive and unthinkable crime. What follows is a brilliantly crafted tale of suspense, deceit, and the lengths one can go to protect themselves.

How to Write “Lamb to The Slaughter” Essay

To write an impactful “Lamb to The Slaughter” essay, we recommend starting with a compelling introduction that sets the stage for the story’s central themes. Dive into the dynamics of the characters, exploring their motivations and the web of deception that unfolds. Discuss the elements of irony and dark humor that Dahl expertly weaves into the narrative, enhancing its overall impact.

In your essay’s body paragraphs, you can explore various “Lamb to The Slaughter” essay topics such as:

• the theme of betrayal within relationships
• the societal expectations of women in the 1950s
• the power dynamics between individuals
• the narrative techniques employed by Dahl, including suspenseful pacing, vivid descriptions, and skillful dialogue, to create a tension-filled reading experience.

For the conclusion, reflect on the lasting impact of “Lamb to The Slaughter” and its ability to engage readers across generations. Consider the timeless themes of betrayal, guilt, and the consequences of impulsive actions. Highlight the story’s relevance in prompting discussions about human nature, the complexity of morality, and the blurred lines between victim and perpetrator.

Lamb to the Slaughter: Dissecting Literary Devices Used in the Story

Similes are quite often used within the short story, “Lamb to the Slaughter”. An example of this can be identified in the title, which can also be interpreted as: “Like a lamb to the slaughter” the lamb in the story is used as a symbol...

• Lamb to The Slaughter
• Short Story

Analysis of the Elements of Fiction in the Novels The Mark of Cain, Lamb to The Slaughter and The Tell-Tale Heart

Summary The Mark of Cain by Roxane Gay The short story is about a young unnamed woman who is married to a man called Caleb, Caleb has an identical twin, Jacob. They both switch places for days. The woman knows about their actions but does...

• The Tell Tale Heart

Antagonist And Protagonist In “Lamb to the Slaughter”

“Lamb to the Slaughter” is a short story written by Ronald Dahl. it is about two people who love each other, but the love is one-sided. One day, the man wants to get a divorce from the woman while she is six months pregnant. She...

• Protagonist

"Lamb to the Slaughter": Comparison of the Story and the Movie

In the three makings of Lamb to the Slaughter, they all tell their story in a different way. In the text comparison to the 1979 film color, one of the main differences was that Mary had a flashback of her killing Patrick instead of her...

My Adaptation to 'Lamb to the Slaughter' by Roald Dahl

The text I am adapting is a short story called “Lamb To The Slaughter” by Roald Dahl. In this text, there were a lot of things that interested me. In the story, Roald Dahl uses the themes of death and murder. Patrick Maloney is one...

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The Character of Mary Maloney In “Lamb to the Slaughter”

Mary Maloney is the protagonist of Roald Dahl’s short story, “Lamb to the Slaughter”. She is introduced as a typical middle class housewife who is six months pregnant and is devoted to her husband, Patrick Maloney. She is described as beautiful woman, with soft skin...

Best topics on Lamb to The Slaughter

1. Lamb to the Slaughter: Dissecting Literary Devices Used in the Story

2. Analysis of the Elements of Fiction in the Novels The Mark of Cain, Lamb to The Slaughter and The Tell-Tale Heart

3. Antagonist And Protagonist In “Lamb to the Slaughter”

4. “Lamb to the Slaughter”: Comparison of the Story and the Movie

5. My Adaptation to ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ by Roald Dahl

6. The Character of Mary Maloney In “Lamb to the Slaughter”

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Teaching Lamb to the Slaughter

Looking for new ways to use this classic short story? I’m sharing tips and activities I’ve learned while teaching Lamb to the Slaughter.

Usually, I’m all about finding contemporary short stories to teach in middle and high school. However, one classic short story my students adore is Roald Dahl’s “Lamb to the Slaughter.” 

In Lamb to the Slaughter, Mrs. Maloney is a pregnant housewife whose husband announces he wants a divorce. In a stupor, she gets a frozen leg of lamb out of the freezer for their dinner, but ends up bashing him over the head with it. The police come to investigate and she plays innocent. Then, she insists they stay for dinner (it’s lamb!). 

Lamb to the Slaughter pre-reading activities

One of my students’ favorite activities of the year is the pre-reading activity for this short story. In my Lamb to the Slaughter Inferences Challenge , students play a young detective trying to solve the murder of Patrick Maloney. They work in teams to make inferences text-by-text, slowly moving through the events of the story. Finally, they’re asked to infer what happened to Mr. Maloney.

It’s an incredible activity that gets students citing textual evidence right away. Since they’re making inferences, they’re thinking critically about each piece of the puzzle. 

After the activity, they read the story for homework. Anyone that deduces the correct answer is always thoroughly impressed with themselves.

Want even more ideas for teaching short stories? Check out this post!

Want more ideas for teaching INCLUSIVE short stories? I’ve got you!

Need ideas for teaching figurative language with short stories? Check out this round-up!

Lamb to the Slaughter writing prompts

My favorite writing prompt when teaching Lamb to the Slaughter is to have students write a closing argument in the defense or prosecution of Mrs. Maloney. Honestly, it doesn’t matter to me which they pick (we all know she’s guilty!), but they have to defend their position with textual evidence. 

One year, I even had students who wanted to get up in front of the class and act out their cases, playing a variety of sleazy lawyers. I get it – it’s a great case, and you gotta give ‘em the ol’ Razzle Dazzle!

Final Thoughts

I hope you’ll try these ideas the next time you’re teaching Lamb to the Slaughter 🙂 Let me know how it goes! Comment below or find me on IG @nouvelle_ela .

Happy teaching!

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How I learned to stop worrying and love fake meat

Let’s stop inventing reasons to reject cultured meat and other protein alternatives that could dramatically cut climate emissions.

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Fixing our collective meat problem is one of the trickiest challenges in addressing climate change—and for some baffling reason, the world seems intent on making the task even harder.

The latest example occurred last week, when Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed a law banning the production, sale, and transportation of cultured meat across the Sunshine State. 

“Florida is fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals,” DeSantis seethed in a statement.

Alternative meat and animal products—be they lab-grown or plant-based—offer a far more sustainable path to mass-producing protein than raising animals for milk or slaughter. Yet again and again, politicians, dietitians, and even the press continue to devise ways to portray these products as controversial, suspect, or substandard. No matter how good they taste or how much they might reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, there’s always some new obstacle standing in the way—in this case, Governor DeSantis, wearing a not-at-all-uncomfortable smile.  

The new law clearly has nothing to do with the creeping threat of authoritarianism (though for more on that, do check out his administration’s crusade to ban books about gay penguins). First and foremost it is an act of political pandering, a way to coddle Florida’s sizable cattle industry, which he goes on to mention in the statement.

Cultured meat is seen as a threat to the livestock industry because animals are only minimally involved in its production. Companies grow cells originally extracted from animals in a nutrient broth and then form them into nuggets, patties or fillets. The US Department of Agriculture has already given its blessing to two companies , Upside Foods and Good Meat, to begin selling cultured chicken products to consumers. Israel recently became the first nation to sign off on a beef version.

It’s still hard to say if cultured meat will get good enough and cheap enough anytime soon to meaningfully reduce our dependence on cattle, chicken, pigs, sheep, goats, and other animals for our protein and our dining pleasure. And it’s sure to take years before we can produce it in ways that generate significantly lower emissions than standard livestock practices today.

But there are high hopes it could become a cleaner and less cruel way of producing meat, since it wouldn’t require all the land, food, and energy needed to raise, feed, slaughter, and process animals today. One study found that cultured meat could reduce emissions per kilogram of meat 92% by 2030, even if cattle farming also achieves substantial improvements.

Those sorts of gains are essential if we hope to ease the rising dangers of climate change, because meat, dairy, and cheese production are huge contributors to greenhouse-gas emissions.

DeSantis and politicians in other states that may follow suit, including Alabama and Tennessee, are raising the specter of mandated bug-eating and global-elite string-pulling to turn cultured meat into a cultural issue, and kill the industry in its infancy. 

But, again, it’s always something. I’ve heard a host of other arguments across the political spectrum directed against various alternative protein products, which also include plant-based burgers, cheeses, and milks, or even cricket-derived powders and meal bars . Apparently these meat and dairy alternatives shouldn’t be highly processed, mass-produced, or genetically engineered, nor should they ever be as unhealthy as their animal-based counterparts. 

In effect, we are setting up tests that almost no products can pass, when really all we should ask of alternative proteins is that they be safe, taste good, and cut climate pollution.

The meat of the matter

Here’s the problem. 

Livestock production generates more than 7 billion tons of carbon dioxide, making up 14.5% of the world’s overall climate emissions, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

Beef, milk, and cheese production are, by far, the biggest problems, representing some 65% of the sector’s emissions. We burn down carbon-dense forests to provide cows with lots of grazing land; then they return the favor by burping up staggering amounts of methane, one of the most powerful greenhouse gases. Florida’s cattle population alone, for example, could generate about 180 million pounds of methane every year, as calculated from standard per-animal emissions . 

In an earlier paper , the World Resources Institute noted that in the average US diet, beef contributed 3% of the calories but almost half the climate pollution from food production. (If you want to take a single action that could meaningfully ease your climate footprint, read that sentence again.)

The added challenge is that the world’s population is both growing and becoming richer, which means more people can afford more meat. 

There are ways to address some of the emissions from livestock production without cultured meat or plant-based burgers, including developing supplements that reduce methane burps and encouraging consumers to simply reduce meat consumption. Even just switching from beef to chicken can make a huge difference .

Let’s clear up one matter, though. I can’t imagine a politician in my lifetime, in the US or most of the world, proposing a ban on meat and expecting to survive the next election. So no, dear reader. No one’s coming for your rib eye. If there’s any attack on personal freedoms and economic liberty here, DeSantis is the one waging it by not allowing Floridians to choose for themselves what they want to eat.

But there is a real problem in need of solving. And the grand hope of companies like Beyond Meat, Upside Foods, Miyoko’s Creamery, and dozens of others is that we can develop meat, milk, and cheese alternatives that are akin to EVs: that is to say, products that are good enough to solve the problem without demanding any sacrifice from consumers or requiring government mandates. (Though subsidies always help.)

The good news is the world is making some real progress in developing substitutes that increasingly taste like, look like, and have (with apologies for the snooty term) the “mouthfeel” of the traditional versions, whether they’ve been developed from animal cells or plants. If they catch on and scale up, it could make a real dent in emissions—with the bonus of reducing animal suffering, environmental damage, and the spillover of animal disease into the human population.

The bad news is we can’t seem to take the wins when we get them. 

The blue cheese blues

For lunch last Friday, I swung by the Butcher’s Son Vegan Delicatessen & Bakery in Berkeley, California, and ordered a vegan Buffalo chicken sandwich with a blue cheese on the side that was developed by Climax Foods , also based in Berkeley.

Late last month, it emerged that the product had, improbably, clinched the cheese category in the blind taste tests of the prestigious Good Food awards, as the Washington Post revealed .

Let’s pause here to note that this is a stunning victory for vegan cheeses, a clear sign that we can use plants to produce top-notch artisanal products, indistinguishable even to the refined palates of expert gourmands. If a product is every bit as tasty and satisfying as the original but can be produced without milking methane-burping animals, that’s a big climate win.

But sadly, that’s not where the story ended.

After word leaked out that the blue cheese was a finalist, if not the winner, the Good Food Foundation seems to have added a rule that didn’t exist when the competition began but which disqualified Climax Blue , the Post reported.

I have no special insights into what unfolded behind the scenes. But it reads at least a little as if the competition concocted an excuse to dethrone a vegan cheese that had bested its animal counterparts and left traditionalists aghast. 

That victory might have done wonders to help promote acceptance of the Climax product, if not the wider category. But now the story is the controversy. And that’s a shame. Because the cheese is actually pretty good. 

I’m no professional foodie, but I do have a lifetime of expertise born of stubbornly refusing to eat any salad dressing other than blue cheese. In my own taste test, I can report it looked and tasted like mild blue cheese, which is all it needs to do.

A beef about burgers

Banning a product or changing a cheese contest’s rules after determining the winner are both bad enough. But the reaction to alternative proteins that has left me most befuddled is the media narrative that formed around the latest generation of plant-based burgers soon after they started getting popular a few years ago. Story after story would note, in the tone of a bold truth-teller revealing something new each time: Did you know these newfangled plant-based burgers aren’t actually all that much healthier than the meat variety? 

To which I would scream at my monitor: THAT WAS NEVER THE POINT!

The world has long been perfectly capable of producing plant-based burgers that are better for you, but the problem is that they tend to taste like plants. The actual innovation with the more recent options like Beyond Burger or Impossible Burger is that they look and taste like the real thing but can be produced with a dramatically smaller climate footprint .

That’s a big enough win in itself. 

If I were a health reporter, maybe I’d focus on these issues too. And if health is your personal priority, you should shop for a different plant-based patty (or I might recommend a nice salad, preferably with blue cheese dressing).

But speaking as a climate reporter, expecting a product to ease global warming, taste like a juicy burger, and also be low in salt, fat, and calories is absurd. You may as well ask a startup to conduct sorcery.

More important, making a plant-based burger healthier for us may also come at the cost of having it taste like a burger. Which would make it that much harder to win over consumers beyond the niche of vegetarians and thus have any meaningful impact on emissions. WHICH IS THE POINT!

It’s incredibly difficult to convince consumers to switch brands and change behaviors, even for a product as basic as toothpaste or toilet paper. Food is trickier still, because it’s deeply entwined with local culture, family traditions, festivals and celebrations. Whether we find a novel food product to be yummy or yucky is subjective and highly subject to suggestion. 

And so I’m ending with a plea. Let’s grant ourselves the best shot possible at solving one of the hardest, most urgent problems before us. Treat bans and political posturing with the ridicule they deserve. Reject the argument that any single product must, or can, solve all the problems related to food, health, and the environment.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Lamb to The Slaughter — Theme Of Lamb To The Slaughter

Theme of Lamb to The Slaughter

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What MAGA’s Beef With Lab-Grown Meat Says About the G.O.P.

Paul krugman on how burgers became the focus of a conspiracy theory..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

I’m Paul Krugman, an opinion writer for the “New York Times,” also a professor of economics at my other life. And once in a while, I get to write about stuff a little bit outside my usual beat, like lab-grown meat.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Governor DeSantis of Florida has signed a bill that bans both the production and the sale of lab-grown meat, or cultured meat.

Take your fake, lab-grown meat elsewhere. We’re not doing that in the state of Florida.

The idea is that instead of raising a cow, you take, basically, cow cells and grow them in a vat or something, and then you harvest them. So you get the meat, but without having to raise and then slaughter an animal along the way. And it’s a possibility, something we can do, but also not economically viable at this point. It’s an industry that doesn’t exist. But anyway, of all things, lab-based meat is now illegal in the state of Florida.

I was really struck that, of all the things going on, that Ron DeSantis would choose to make this a priority. And it seemed to me a kind of window into the mindset of a lot of today’s right. If we look at where the conservative movement is at, certainly where MAGA is at, there is, first of all, this belief that elites are out there to force you to stop living an American lifestyle, which includes eating a lot of steaks and burgers.

It’s got a psychological association with their version of freedom. They want to stop using your gas stove. They want you to stop driving your big SUV, and that environmental policies in general are somehow about restricting Americans’ freedom. So that’s the ideological basis for it, which, then, turns into a bunch of conspiracy theories.

So there were a lot of people saying that because President Biden wants to limit emissions of greenhouse gases, that gets translated into, there’s a secret plan to limit the number of burgers you’re allowed to consume. There’s no hint that that actually happens, but it’s out there. A few scientists have said, hey, insects are a pretty good source of protein that we don’t use. So that becomes, there’s a secret conspiracy to force you to eat bugs.

And somehow, all of this turns into, we’re going to pass a law that prevents the production of something that’s an alternative to traditional beef. I wanted a very sort of graphic, literal sense, illustration of what’s really going on here. And I have to say, nothing I can write can possibly get at the commercial side, the political side than that “Simpsons” episode from 1995, “Lisa the Vegetarian.”

What’s wrong, Lisa? Didn’t you get enough lamb chops?

I can’t eat this.

Lisa is forced to sit through a school video called “Meat and You — Partners in Freedom.”

It all starts here in the high density feedlot. Come on, Jimmy. Let’s take a peek at the killing floor. Don’t let the name throw you, Jimmy. It’s not really a floor.

It ends with Lisa Simpson saying —

They can’t seriously expect us to swallow that tripe.

Now, as a special treat, courtesy of our friends at the meat council, please help yourselves to this tripe.

And all the students start scarfing it down.

[STUDENTS SHOUTING]

If you look at where we are, if we look at what MAGA is, if we look at what the kinds of things that you hear on the floor of the House, these things aren’t new. There would have been members of Congress in 1995 who would have tried to ban lab-grown meat, but they wouldn’t have controlled the state of Florida.

What’s different right now is that such people are running the Republican Party. Particularly in the Trump years, the balance of power within the GOP shifted very much towards those kinds of obsessions. I’m not an admirer of Ronald Reagan, but at least the core of Reaganism was about real policy issues.

He was saying, cut marginal tax rates, deregulate industry. Great things will happen. I don’t think that he was right, but at least it was about real policy. Something like this, which is devoting a lot of time and effort to symbolic gestures against something that you think is woke, that’s a big step down from the Republican Party as it was 40 years ago. The attitude, which is that politics is about displaying what kind of person you are and what your allegiance is, as opposed to about actually getting policies that work in place, that matters a lot.

I like beef. Beef doesn’t always like me quite as much. And I’m definitely not a good enough person to say, OK, I have to stop eating this because of the greenhouse gas emissions. I’m certainly not a good enough person to say, gosh, this involves killing animals. Why am I doing it?

I do know people like that, and I respect them for it. But if it were available, if I could get beef without any of those downsides and it wasn’t wildly expensive, I would do it. Fine with me.

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• May 15, 2024   •   5:57 What MAGA’s Beef With Lab-Grown Meat Says About the G.O.P.
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By Paul Krugman

Produced by Derek Arthur and Jillian Weinberger

Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida recently signed a bill that bans both the production and the sale of lab-grown meat. In this audio essay, the columnist Paul Krugman argues that DeSantis’s actions represent a window into the modern Republican Party, a party in which “politics is about displaying what kind of person you are and what your allegiance is, as opposed to actually getting policies that work in place.”

(A full transcript of this audio essay will be available within 24 hours of publication in the audio player above.)

Thoughts? Email us at [email protected] .

This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Derek Arthur and Jillian Weinberger. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Pat McCusker. Original music by Carole Sabouraud and Pat McCusker. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

Paul Krugman has been an Opinion columnist since 2000 and is also a distinguished professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on international trade and economic geography. @ PaulKrugman