Last month, Bloomberg published an exposé on Upside Foods, a leader in the cell-cultivated meat space. The two authors Deena Shanker and Priya Anand noted that despite raising hundreds of millions of dollars and making lofty promises that their products would be on shelves by now, the company had “very little to show for themselves.” An investigation published in Wired in September reached a similar conclusion.

Although there’s no question Upside has underperformed relative to its own stated goals—much like many of the other companies in the industry—that last bit may be a little bit of an exaggeration. After all, cell-cultivated meat was once the stuff of complete science fiction. But now, thanks in large part to Upside Foods, that’s no longer the case—the company garnered regulatory approval from the USDA and FDA for its cell-cultivated chicken breast and is now selling it (in small quantities) in a high-end restaurant.

I think these milestones are worthy of celebration, but the bad press disagrees. Is cell-cultivated meat really turning out to be “another expensive Silicon Valley mess” and a fundamental waste of time?

To make such a bold claim—that the entire pursuit was worthless—demonstrates a lack of understanding as to why it is so important that companies like Upside try to overcome the obstacles in their industry, no matter the odds.

Consider that in the United States alone, 10 billion land animals are raised in factory farms. These animals—cows, pigs, chickens, and more—are no different in the ways that count from my dogs, Tobey and Cooper, and yet, they are caged, mutilated, and slaughtered. Globally, it’s 70 billion, and when sea animals are included, the number is in the trillions. Cell-cultivated meat would allow people to eat meat without contributing to the systematic torture of living beings—that’s a big deal.

But critics are quick to point out that animals are still used in the “ethically dubious” process of cultivating meat from cells, due to the use of animal-based components like fetal bovine serum and gelatin to facilitate cell growth. The hope is that animals will eventually be phased out of the process, but regardless, isn’t it better to harm a significantly fewer number of animals? Even a strict vegan lifestyle isn’t disentangled from animal suffering, as plenty of wild animals are killed in the production of a number of crops (though many fewer than inefficiently feeding crops to factory farmed animals rather than directly to people). To expect a cruelty-free world is naive, and cell-cultivated meat would dramatically reduce animal suffering—that’s all we can ask for.

Then there’s the impact of factory farming on the environment. It’s responsible for 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions (and some believe that estimate is on the low end). It’s the number one cause of habitat destruction—the biggest driver of species extinction—and is responsible for the use of up to a third of freshwater, including in regions experiencing droughts. Studies show that cell-cultivated meat at scale would use a fraction of the land and dramatically less water. Whether it generates fewer emissions is dependent in large part on the scale and accessibility of renewable energy, but at least it has potential. There’s no way to power a cow in a climate-friendly way.

Human health is another major topic of concern in conversations about factory farmed meat. Major health organizations like the American Cancer Society consider processed meat a known carcinogen, and red meat, including beef, pork, and lamb, a probable carcinogen. Poultry comes with its own health risks, like being prone to contamination with Campylobacter and Salmonella. And virtually all factory farmed animal products increase the risk of “superbugs”—antibiotic-resistant bacteria—and viruses that jump from animals to people. This is why it’s bizarre that Shanker and Anand are so fixated on the fact that Upside’s chicken had lead in it. Of course, “lead in chicken” is a phrase likely to raise concern, and reasonably so.

But given that small quantities of lead are often in countless crops, from apples to carrots, and that the FDA determined Upside’s chicken was at safe levels, this amounts to fear-mongering. The majority of people in the world eat meat, regardless of all these health risks, and for a variety of reasons are unwilling to switch to a plant-based diet. We’ve tried sticking up our noses and telling people to just “eat more beans.” By and large—and much to my own frustration—it just doesn’t work. To give up on the effort of developing a healthier meat that has a shot at actually getting people off of the factory farmed kind would be to give up on the health of most of the human population.

There’s certainly something to be said for exclusively chasing down scientific breakthroughs, when we should also be prioritizing initiatives—policy, education, and so on—that may increase our odds of mitigating the issues of animal suffering, environmental degradation, and poor human health. We could probably afford to scale back on flashy but distracting cell-cultivated meat initiatives that don’t seem to serve a very practical purpose (at least in the short-term). It could even be argued, as I have elsewhere, that cell-cultivated meat companies are digging their own graves by overpromising and under-delivering, hurting not just their own credibility but worsening public opinion of the entire alternative protein sector (including plant-based meat, like those made by Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods).

As with any new frontiers, we’re probably making a bunch of mistakes when it comes to developing cell-cultivated meat, probably even more than we’re currently aware of. Such is the way of innovation—by the time we figure out how to make delicious, affordable, scalable cell-cultivated meat, if such a thing is ultimately possible, we’ll probably also have come up with a million ways not to make cell-cultivated meat. But pursuing the dream of cell-cultivated meat is, itself, anything but a “miscalculation.” It’s a moral obligation.