Hi Michael, thanks for engaging; just flagging this will be my last reply on this thread :)
Quickly reviewing the RethinkX report, it seems like the dramatic changes forecast on very short timelines have not come to pass:
Precision fermentation beef is not currently ~$2/kg (Figure 11)
30% of the US beef ‘tissue’ market is not from cultured or precision fermentation (Figure 12)
US cattle population is forecast to decline ~80M but remains steady at 94M as of 2021
Similarly, US chicken populations remain stable
The cost curves in Fig 5 does not cite any source for the data, but I suspect they’re using the Mark Post’s ‘million dollar burger’ as a data point; this cost doesn’t reasonably represent a price estimate since the burger was never for sale or purchased at that price, but does induce a dramatically negative slope on the curve.
I take a first principles approach to solving problems.
I don’t really know what this means, or how it differs from, for example, knowledge of chemistry, a field which generally builds on ‘first principles’ in some sense. In any event, the resulting reasoning, which sets trivially low input costs, seems wrong. For example, this reasoning would not explain why the price of all organic chemicals is not roughly uniform and similarly extremely low, since most organics are simply carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Furthermore, why would this reasoning not also apply to the animal-based chicken industry, ~eliminating their costs for feed and fuel?
I’ve never seen public acceptance not change in the past with other disruptions.
This seems circular: a technology wouldn’t be a disruption unless it was widely accepted. So, by definition, a disruptive technology is accepted by the public. This is also a result of survivorship bias—presumably some potentially ‘disruptive’ technologies did not result in disruption because they were not accepted by the public.
Thanks Jacob, I definitely appreciate your input too as I am no expert on the production of cellular meat or precision fermentation. I’m generally interested in reducing costs of living & reducing suffering.
That said here are my thoughts on what you said.
I entirely agree that their predictions in this space in the near term have proven inaccurate on the market. However the $2 figure might not be referring to sales costs, but the cost of production in a large state of the art factory.
Basically if an optimized factory was built with the best 2023 technology, could they get the cost of production below $2/Kg?
We’re in complete agreement about their 2023 timeline predictions, they were overly optimistic. What’s important though is if the overall cost curve over the next decade is going to take the shape they’ve predicted (exponential declines versus linear or logarithmic).
With input costs, cows & chickens are inefficient machines that require massive amounts of (water especially) input materials, land area, and maintenance. I agree the feed & fuel costs for animals could in theory be reduced by an order of magnitude, but animals will always be inefficient.
Importantly, if PF & cell based meats take market share from the most affordable meats first (ground beef & whatever chicken nuggets are made of), the animal meat sellers will encounter a negative feedback loop as they loose economies of scale and margins reduce.
By disruptions, I mean any system that is 5X or more better at doing something than the incumbent system.
You’re right that PF Meats are not—yet—a disruptive technology, I should have worded it better, but I the costs are declining by a consistent percentage each year. If the cost keeps declining exponentially according to Wrights Law, these predictions will come to pass.
At the end of the day, how much room for improvement is there in R&D and mass manufacturing in this space?
How much extra room can be created by AI enabled advancement, protein folding, robotics advancement, and rapidly lowering energy acquisition costs?
Hi Michael, thanks for engaging; just flagging this will be my last reply on this thread :)
Quickly reviewing the RethinkX report, it seems like the dramatic changes forecast on very short timelines have not come to pass:
Precision fermentation beef is not currently ~$2/kg (Figure 11)
30% of the US beef ‘tissue’ market is not from cultured or precision fermentation (Figure 12)
US cattle population is forecast to decline ~80M but remains steady at 94M as of 2021
Similarly, US chicken populations remain stable
The cost curves in Fig 5 does not cite any source for the data, but I suspect they’re using the Mark Post’s ‘million dollar burger’ as a data point; this cost doesn’t reasonably represent a price estimate since the burger was never for sale or purchased at that price, but does induce a dramatically negative slope on the curve.
I don’t really know what this means, or how it differs from, for example, knowledge of chemistry, a field which generally builds on ‘first principles’ in some sense. In any event, the resulting reasoning, which sets trivially low input costs, seems wrong. For example, this reasoning would not explain why the price of all organic chemicals is not roughly uniform and similarly extremely low, since most organics are simply carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Furthermore, why would this reasoning not also apply to the animal-based chicken industry, ~eliminating their costs for feed and fuel?
This seems circular: a technology wouldn’t be a disruption unless it was widely accepted. So, by definition, a disruptive technology is accepted by the public. This is also a result of survivorship bias—presumably some potentially ‘disruptive’ technologies did not result in disruption because they were not accepted by the public.
Thanks Jacob, I definitely appreciate your input too as I am no expert on the production of cellular meat or precision fermentation. I’m generally interested in reducing costs of living & reducing suffering.
That said here are my thoughts on what you said.
I entirely agree that their predictions in this space in the near term have proven inaccurate on the market. However the $2 figure might not be referring to sales costs, but the cost of production in a large state of the art factory.
Basically if an optimized factory was built with the best 2023 technology, could they get the cost of production below $2/Kg?
We’re in complete agreement about their 2023 timeline predictions, they were overly optimistic. What’s important though is if the overall cost curve over the next decade is going to take the shape they’ve predicted (exponential declines versus linear or logarithmic).
With input costs, cows & chickens are inefficient machines that require massive amounts of (water especially) input materials, land area, and maintenance. I agree the feed & fuel costs for animals could in theory be reduced by an order of magnitude, but animals will always be inefficient.
Importantly, if PF & cell based meats take market share from the most affordable meats first (ground beef & whatever chicken nuggets are made of), the animal meat sellers will encounter a negative feedback loop as they loose economies of scale and margins reduce.
By disruptions, I mean any system that is 5X or more better at doing something than the incumbent system.
You’re right that PF Meats are not—yet—a disruptive technology, I should have worded it better, but I the costs are declining by a consistent percentage each year. If the cost keeps declining exponentially according to Wrights Law, these predictions will come to pass.
At the end of the day, how much room for improvement is there in R&D and mass manufacturing in this space?
How much extra room can be created by AI enabled advancement, protein folding, robotics advancement, and rapidly lowering energy acquisition costs?