If I understand correctly, you compare a donation to an animal welfare organization to an investment in alt protein? At least that is the case in the linked article. I find this comparison somewhat unfortunate, because with a donation the money is gone, with an investment (hopefully) not. A better comparison would be a donation to an animal welfare organization vs. a donation to e.g. the Good Food Institute, which uses the money to encourage more private or public investment.
Regarding displacement: Intuitively, I can’t imagine that increased consumption of alt protein won’t reduce meat consumption at the moment (to what extent I can’t judge). In the long term, I’m pretty sure it will, because I think there’s a kind of natural upper limit to total food consumption (apart from perhaps the possibility that more and more food will be thrown away).
If I understand correctly, you compare a donation to an animal welfare organization to an investment in alt protein? At least that is the case in the linked article. I find this comparison somewhat unfortunate, because with a donation the money is gone, with an investment (hopefully) not. A better comparison would be a donation to an animal welfare organization vs. a donation to e.g. the Good Food Institute, which uses the money to encourage more private or public investment.
Regarding displacement: Intuitively, I can’t imagine that increased consumption of alt protein won’t reduce meat consumption at the moment (to what extent I can’t judge). In the long term, I’m pretty sure it will, because I think there’s a kind of natural upper limit to total food consumption (apart from perhaps the possibility that more and more food will be thrown away).