To The Editor,

To The Editor,

I imagine there are animals who Senators Rick Scott and Marco Rubio care about deeply — perhaps a dog or a cat. The truth is there’s not much difference between these creatures and the more than a trillion aquatic and land animals we kill each year for human consumption. That’s why the senators should support federal funding for cultured-meat re-search.

For readers who don’t know, cultured meat is grown from animal cells, without slaughter. This revolutionary protein has already been granted regularity approval in Singapore. An Israeli company has reduced its production cost to $7.50 for a quarter pound of cultured chicken. Still, further development is necessary to make the price competitive with slaughtered meat.