고등학교 영어 독해와 작문 (NE능률 양현권) 연계 글

For many centuries, eating meat has meant raising animals, feeding them for months or years, and finally slaughtering them. Cultivated meat, which is grown from animal cells rather than cut from a slaughtered animal, offers a different route to the same food. In 2013, a beef burger made from cells grown in a laboratory was cooked and eaten at a press event in London. Seven years later, Singapore became the first country to approve the sale of cultivated meat when it cleared a chicken product made in this way.

The process begins when a small sample of cells is taken from a living animal, a step that does not require the animal to be harmed or killed. The cells are then placed in sealed, sterile vessels called bioreactors, where a nutrient-rich liquid known as a growth medium allows them to multiply. Later, other substances are added so that the cells develop into muscle or fat, and the resulting material is harvested and processed with ordinary food-making methods.

What remains uncertain is whether this method can ever produce meat cheaply and in large quantities. Researchers regard the growth medium as the key challenge in terms of cost, and early versions of it relied on a serum taken from unborn calves. In 2023, Singapore approved a cultivated chicken that had been grown without such serum. Running the bioreactors also takes a considerable amount of energy, since the liquid must be kept at a steady temperature, supplied with air, and mixed. Moreover, minced products such as burgers and nuggets are far simpler to make than steak, which requires several types of cells arranged in an organized structure. For these reasons, I would suggest that each bold promise about this food be weighed against evidence from careful studies.

In 2022, Britain was the site of a trial that its researchers called the world's largest test of a four-day working week to date: about 2,900 workers at 61 organizations took part from June to December. The organizations reduced their employees' hours without lowering their pay, and each was free to design a schedule that suited its own work, from giving everyone Fridays off to staggering days off within a team. Researchers from British and American universities gathered monthly figures from the companies and surveyed the employees before and after the change.

What the surveys recorded at the end of the trial was a drop in stress: 39 percent of the employees felt less stressed than before, and 71 percent reported lower levels of burnout. Meanwhile, the companies' revenue stayed broadly the same, rising by 1.4 percent on average among the 23 organizations that supplied enough data. Resignations fell from 2 to 0.8 per hundred employees in comparison with an earlier six-month period, and sick and personal days dropped sharply as well. After the trial ended, 56 of the 61 organizations continued with the shorter week, and 18 of them declared the change permanent.

The report itself, however, admits that the sample was small and that the falls in resignations and absences could not be shown to be statistically significant. It also warns that changes in the wider economy may have affected the companies' figures during the trial. In my view, these results are promising enough to deserve serious attention from employers. I would recommend, however, that a company considering the change begin with a trial of its own and measure the outcome with equal care.