Nice, these are good questions, but probably don’t capture all the cruxes in my view. 1. I think this seems moderately unlikely to me? I’m not sure what would drive down prices further than where they are now, as it seems like a large portion of the cost are the proteins themselves, and not production.
3. I think this seems possible? But I’d put below 50% on it, and if it does happen, I’d expect something more like the climate movement, where lots of people think it is important but don’t really take substantial steps to act on it.
4. I think that reaching 20% vegetarian seems possible in some countries, but I think I’m a lot more skeptical it’ll go much higher.
I think it does seem plausible to me that there would be a meaningful reduction in the amount of meat consumed over this period in developed countries, but also expect that might come with more chicken/fish consumption that would offset animal welfare gains anyway.
I think another crux more important to my pessimism is that I don’t feel very convinced that price/taste competitive meat alternatives will cause a significant increase in their adoption.
That’s interesting, based on thinking that animal protein in the end comes from plant protein, and that animals use up a lot of space, food, and extra infrastructure that is not directly involved in turning plant protein into meat, I’d’ve guessed that plant protein would be much cheaper than animal protein.
Interesting, hard for me to judge. Reading the Innovations needed section, it seems like most hurdles are in the 3 OOM range, only the growth factor price is 6 OOM off.
My naive reaction is: AI + increased wealth + generally improving science & engineering + increased caring + those are “just” engineering problems → I’m much more bullish than the authors of the report, who are 9% for:
>50M metric tons of cellular meat will be sold at any price within a continuous 12-month span before the end of 2051.
9%
(For context, the annual production of conventional meat (excluding seafood) in 2018 was 346M metric tons)
I’m maybe at 40%, given that plant-based meat might just do it by itself, or that something disruptive happens that affects R&D broadly, or that it’s just unintuitively difficult.
I’m more hopeful this will be more comparable to civil rights / racism / sexism, as there are concrete victims who are suffering (and there is already a broad agreement that animals in human guardianship shouldn’t suffer), compared to climate change, which is much more abstract and indirect.
Yeah, I somewhat agree that the steady increase will probably bottom out at maybe 20%. But my hopeful vision is that at 20%, there will be critical mass effects for political action and for the demand of alternative products to lead to a much more mature industry.
Plus I expect health and climate change angles on meat consumption will also more likely than not steadily increase.
Finally, I’m also probably more optimistic about your last point, thinking that price/taste competitive meat alternatives will be huge. I think the Beyond and Impossible “moments” were huge milestones, and a few more “moments” like that will reduce resistance against higher welfare standards & higher prices for conventional meat.
I think the other consideration is that for really cheap proteins (corn/soy/wheat), chickens and other animals eat much less processed versions that are cheaper than the ones humans eat. But also people seem to like products made from them less. The novel plant protein inputs are a lot more expensive as far as I can tell.
Yeah, I think there is a bunch of uncertainty. My sense of the technical hurdles to cost reduction is that they are fairly large, and I’m not sure they super solvable. But I hope I am wrong!
Yeah, this seems possible too.
Plus I expect health and climate change angles on meat consumption will also more likely than not steadily increase.
I worry these push toward worse animal welfare (less eating of cows, more eating of chicken/fish), not better.
Thanks, that all makes sense and moderates my optimism a bit, and it feels like we roughly exhausted the depth of my thinking. Sigh… anyways, I’m really thankful and maybe also optimistic for the work that dedicated and strategically thinking people like you have been and will be doing for animals.
Really interesting, thanks for sharing. I was particularly surprised about your changes of mind here:
E.g. some spontaneous potential cruxes that might be interesting to hear your disagreement with, in case they capture your reasons for pessimism:
Plant protein sources will become price- and taste-competitive with more than half of all consumed meat products by 2040.
Cultured meat will become price- and taste-competitive with more than half of all consumed meat by 2050.
There is a critical mass of people caring about animal welfare at which animal rights will become major political issues in most democracies.
There will be a steady increase in people caring about animal welfare in the coming decade.
E.g. I expect Germany to have a >20% vegetarian population by 2040 (currently apparently 12%).
Nice, these are good questions, but probably don’t capture all the cruxes in my view.
1. I think this seems moderately unlikely to me? I’m not sure what would drive down prices further than where they are now, as it seems like a large portion of the cost are the proteins themselves, and not production.
2. This also seems like it relies on crossing technological hurdles that are really hard.
3. I think this seems possible? But I’d put below 50% on it, and if it does happen, I’d expect something more like the climate movement, where lots of people think it is important but don’t really take substantial steps to act on it.
4. I think that reaching 20% vegetarian seems possible in some countries, but I think I’m a lot more skeptical it’ll go much higher.
I think it does seem plausible to me that there would be a meaningful reduction in the amount of meat consumed over this period in developed countries, but also expect that might come with more chicken/fish consumption that would offset animal welfare gains anyway.
I think another crux more important to my pessimism is that I don’t feel very convinced that price/taste competitive meat alternatives will cause a significant increase in their adoption.
That’s interesting, based on thinking that animal protein in the end comes from plant protein, and that animals use up a lot of space, food, and extra infrastructure that is not directly involved in turning plant protein into meat, I’d’ve guessed that plant protein would be much cheaper than animal protein.
I quickly asked chatGPT for the cheapest animal vs. plant proteins in the US:
Chicken: Approximately 6.6 cents per gram of protein
Lentils: Approximately 3.7 cents per gram of protein
Less difference than I’d’ve guessed.
Interesting, hard for me to judge. Reading the Innovations needed section, it seems like most hurdles are in the 3 OOM range, only the growth factor price is 6 OOM off.
My naive reaction is: AI + increased wealth + generally improving science & engineering + increased caring + those are “just” engineering problems → I’m much more bullish than the authors of the report, who are 9% for:
(For context, the annual production of conventional meat (excluding seafood) in 2018 was 346M metric tons)
I’m maybe at 40%, given that plant-based meat might just do it by itself, or that something disruptive happens that affects R&D broadly, or that it’s just unintuitively difficult.
I’m more hopeful this will be more comparable to civil rights / racism / sexism, as there are concrete victims who are suffering (and there is already a broad agreement that animals in human guardianship shouldn’t suffer), compared to climate change, which is much more abstract and indirect.
Yeah, I somewhat agree that the steady increase will probably bottom out at maybe 20%. But my hopeful vision is that at 20%, there will be critical mass effects for political action and for the demand of alternative products to lead to a much more mature industry.
Plus I expect health and climate change angles on meat consumption will also more likely than not steadily increase.
Finally, I’m also probably more optimistic about your last point, thinking that price/taste competitive meat alternatives will be huge. I think the Beyond and Impossible “moments” were huge milestones, and a few more “moments” like that will reduce resistance against higher welfare standards & higher prices for conventional meat.
Nice, these are great points.
On some specifics:
I think the other consideration is that for really cheap proteins (corn/soy/wheat), chickens and other animals eat much less processed versions that are cheaper than the ones humans eat. But also people seem to like products made from them less. The novel plant protein inputs are a lot more expensive as far as I can tell.
Yeah, I think there is a bunch of uncertainty. My sense of the technical hurdles to cost reduction is that they are fairly large, and I’m not sure they super solvable. But I hope I am wrong!
Yeah, this seems possible too.
Plus I expect health and climate change angles on meat consumption will also more likely than not steadily increase.
I worry these push toward worse animal welfare (less eating of cows, more eating of chicken/fish), not better.
Thanks, that all makes sense and moderates my optimism a bit, and it feels like we roughly exhausted the depth of my thinking. Sigh… anyways, I’m really thankful and maybe also optimistic for the work that dedicated and strategically thinking people like you have been and will be doing for animals.