If we’re only considering plant-based meat, and only looking out over the near term (say, 1-3 years) then the claims here seem reasonable. So much so, that I’m surprised that the PTC model is so popular.
It may look like your concerns also apply to other alternative proteins (e.g. lab-grown meat). I don’t believe that’s the case.
We have a long way to go before we have lab-grown meat which is price competitive with traditional meat.
I’m willing to accept the argument that price-competitive lab-grown meat may not be sufficient, because of social and psychological factors.
However if lab-grown meat is lots cheaper than normal meat, then it seems reasonable to accept that it will displace most of the normal meat; based on some of your arguments, some people may persist in wanting the “real thing”, but given the existence of such a good and cheap substitute, it should be much easier to regulate to ensure that farmed animals have good lives (in which case I would consider the purchase of meat to be net positive)
Hi Sanjay, thank you for reading and your thoughtful comment! The evidence I reviewed here already spans a couple of years, so I do think it might be reasonable to extrapolate closer to 3-5 years. That said, there isn’t any analysis of trends of over time, so maybe not.
I agree conditional on the existence of similar alternatives, regulating against animal-based meat is easier than if those alternatives don’t exist. Can you elaborate on the why you think the arguments apply differently to lab-grown rather than plant-based meat in your third point? If one believes leaders in the field (eg, Ethan Brown, I think, but could be mis-remembering), we might eventually literally synthesized meat from plant sources; thus, plant-based meat would be meat, as would lab-grown meat. By transitivity, they’d all be “the same.” I myself don’t find the premise here too compelling, but it helps motivate the question: what exactly will be the differences between, plant-based and lab-grown meat that would diferentially impact consumer acceptance?
If we’re only considering plant-based meat, and only looking out over the near term (say, 1-3 years) then the claims here seem reasonable. So much so, that I’m surprised that the PTC model is so popular.
It may look like your concerns also apply to other alternative proteins (e.g. lab-grown meat). I don’t believe that’s the case.
We have a long way to go before we have lab-grown meat which is price competitive with traditional meat.
I’m willing to accept the argument that price-competitive lab-grown meat may not be sufficient, because of social and psychological factors.
However if lab-grown meat is lots cheaper than normal meat, then it seems reasonable to accept that it will displace most of the normal meat; based on some of your arguments, some people may persist in wanting the “real thing”, but given the existence of such a good and cheap substitute, it should be much easier to regulate to ensure that farmed animals have good lives (in which case I would consider the purchase of meat to be net positive)
Hi Sanjay, thank you for reading and your thoughtful comment! The evidence I reviewed here already spans a couple of years, so I do think it might be reasonable to extrapolate closer to 3-5 years. That said, there isn’t any analysis of trends of over time, so maybe not.
I agree conditional on the existence of similar alternatives, regulating against animal-based meat is easier than if those alternatives don’t exist. Can you elaborate on the why you think the arguments apply differently to lab-grown rather than plant-based meat in your third point? If one believes leaders in the field (eg, Ethan Brown, I think, but could be mis-remembering), we might eventually literally synthesized meat from plant sources; thus, plant-based meat would be meat, as would lab-grown meat. By transitivity, they’d all be “the same.” I myself don’t find the premise here too compelling, but it helps motivate the question: what exactly will be the differences between, plant-based and lab-grown meat that would diferentially impact consumer acceptance?