I agree that the PTC hypothesis is generally unsupported by the data available, however I also think this report may be missing the forest for the trees.
My primary issue is that I can’t see how this report or any of this proposed research could meaningfully accelerate the transition away from factory farming and greenhouse gas intensive meat production.
This research deals with understanding whether people would purchase alternative meat if it tasted the same and costed the same as regular meat. However neither of these things are going to be true for longer than 1-2 years because of the cost curve of alternative meats and the technologies involved.
Many of the following points I’m making are based on research by RethinkX, an extremely reputable research organization in the space of disruptive technologies:
Enter precision fermentation, the technology behind cellular meat production. This technology, like most disruptive technologies such as solar and batteries, followed a Wrights Law cost curve.
“For every cumulative doubling of units produced, costs fall by a constant percentage.”
The current costs of precision fermentation are decreasing by about 20% annually and there are no fundamental physics reasons why this would stop anytime soon. The limit to the affordability of lab (or at that point optimized factories full of vats) produced meat is the cost of acquiring energy and the fixed costs of factory infrastructure.
Why should we care about the PTC Hypothesis, people’s preferences for meet alternatives with similar metrics to legacy meat, when the most likely future is one in which alternative meat has the following attributes:
• At least 80% cheaper
• At least as tasty as the best meat today
• Consistently the same quality, every time
• At least as healthy, likely far healthier
• At least 100X less contamination issues.
• A longer shelf life
If the above predictions are accurate, shouldn’t our priority be to accelerate the production of lab grown meat by funding factories, research, etc...?
Why does the PTC Hypothesis matter?
Note that these estimates I’ve put out are sourced primarily from RethinkX and Tony Seba, who accurately predicted the solar price declines, rechargeable battery cost declines, and electric vehicle cost declines of the last two decades.
Read this for a highly in-depth report on all of this:
I consider them to be a highly reliable source which we should take very seriously—however I’m interested to hear any insights from people who are more directly experienced in this space.
Do you think these predictions are directionally correct?
I agree that the PTC hypothesis is generally unsupported by the data available.
Glad to hear!
neither of these things are going to be true for longer than 1-2 years because of the cost curve of alternative meats and the technologies involved.
the most likely future is one in which alternative meat has the following attributes:
• At least 80% cheaper
• At least as tasty as the best meat today
• Consistently the same quality, every time
• At least as healthy, likely far healthier
• At least 100X less contamination issues.
• A longer shelf life
This is probably the crux of our disagreement. I think Humbird 2020 makes a highly informed and compelling argument against this view. (Paraphrasing his words elsewhere, “Cultured meat is a wall of no’s.”) Furthermore, Rethink’s work (where I also work) shows that cultured meat forecasts so far have been consistently wrong and overly optimistic, with more credible forecasts showing limited production through 2050, although perhaps these are not the time scales you have in mind.
RethinkX, an extremely reputable research organization in the space of disruptive technologies
I haven’t spent much time with the report, but from what I recall I didn’t find it especially compelling. Are there any particular attributes or analyses that stood out to you, besides the reputation of its publisher?
limit to the affordability of lab (or at that point optimized factories full of vats) produced meat is the cost of acquiring energy and the fixed costs of factory infrastructure.
This seems wrong because raw materials are also required.
If the above predictions are accurate, shouldn’t our priority be to accelerate the production of lab grown meat by funding factories, research, etc...?
These predictions do not address consumer acceptance. It’s possible that people will not want to eat cultured meat: animal-based meat is already quite cheap (presumably even more so given the technological innovations your forecasts entail), cheapness might be taken as an indicator of inferiority, food neophobia, traditional values, unnaturalness, etc.
Do you think these predictions are directionally correct?
Probably no, but these predictions don’t offer any timeline so its difficult to evaluate.
Thanks for the insight, I’m no expert on this topic so I’ve been going off conversations with friends in the space, RethinkX, and I take a first principles approach to solving problems.
I read the study and the conclusion seems to say the top problems are metabolic efficiency enhancements and the development of low-cost media from plant hydrolysates. But there are a lot of other engineering problems.
However I didn’t see any fundamental problems (physics based) that would force a floor on how good it can get. There were and are plenty of engineering problems with making batteries & solar cheaper as well (and AI better).
I also took at look at the forecasting articles, and they all seem to revolve around explicitly looking at cell based meat predictions and the bad predictions made by startups in the space.
“from what I recall I didn’t find it especially compelling. Are there any particular attributes or analyses that stood out to you, besides the reputation of its publisher?”
I read the entire report a few years ago, and I found it quite compelling. I’ve studied the s-curve adoption of many technologies and I’ve found the ’Seba Disruption Framework” to be very reliable. It’s not just their reputation, I’ve personally seen their predictions in other spaces be far more accurate than other prediction organizations.
I’m interested to know what you found particularly uncompelling about the report?
Let’s talk raw materials. The vast majority of the elemental components of meat can be sourced directly from the air using electricity. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. Some minerals and other elements (Sulphur Iron, Zinc, Selenium) would need to be sourced, which would entail transportation to a factory for processing. I asked GPT4 to calculate the cost of the needed mined materials for one lb of steak.
Sulphur: Typically found at about 0.3% in meat.
Average cost: $65 per ton.
Cost in one pound of steak: 0.003 * 1/2000 * $65 ≈ $0.0000975
Iron: Around 0.007% in meat.
Average cost: $120 per ton.
Cost in one pound of steak: 0.00007 * 1/2000 * $120 ≈ $0.000042
Zinc: Around 0.0035% in meat.
Average cost: $2,500 per ton.
Cost in one pound of steak: 0.000035 * 1/2000 * $2,500 ≈ $0.04375
Selenium: Extremely trace amounts, around 0.000035% in meat.
Average cost: $65 per pound (Selenium is often priced per pound due to its rarity).
Cost in one pound of steak: 0.00000035 * $65 ≈ $0.00002275
Adding these up, the total elemental cost of Sulphur, Iron, Zinc, and Selenium in one pound of steak would be approximately $0.044.
Each pound of meat needs ~4.4¢ of mined material. Every other cost is in the production process.
They did similar calculations for the cost of lithium ion batteries, which were over 100X more expensive decades ago and are now approaching the material cost.
I agree this stuff doesn’t ensure public acceptance, but I’ve never seen public acceptance not change in the past with other disruptions. Most people in the original PTC studies put price as their #1 issue, and that’s the same answer I’ve gotten from anecdotal conversations (including conservatives). There’s also a page or two in the report that addresses public acceptance.
Also if this takes most of the meat demand, economics of scale dictate that animal meat costs will rise, further accelerating the S-curve disruption.
The time horizon they’ve predicted is cheaper than conventional meat by 2030, and ~80% cheaper by 2035.
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?
I agree that the PTC hypothesis is generally unsupported by the data available, however I also think this report may be missing the forest for the trees.
My primary issue is that I can’t see how this report or any of this proposed research could meaningfully accelerate the transition away from factory farming and greenhouse gas intensive meat production.
This research deals with understanding whether people would purchase alternative meat if it tasted the same and costed the same as regular meat. However neither of these things are going to be true for longer than 1-2 years because of the cost curve of alternative meats and the technologies involved.
Many of the following points I’m making are based on research by RethinkX, an extremely reputable research organization in the space of disruptive technologies:
Source: https://www.rethinkx.com/food-and-agriculture
Enter precision fermentation, the technology behind cellular meat production. This technology, like most disruptive technologies such as solar and batteries, followed a Wrights Law cost curve.
“For every cumulative doubling of units produced, costs fall by a constant percentage.”
The current costs of precision fermentation are decreasing by about 20% annually and there are no fundamental physics reasons why this would stop anytime soon. The limit to the affordability of lab (or at that point optimized factories full of vats) produced meat is the cost of acquiring energy and the fixed costs of factory infrastructure.
Why should we care about the PTC Hypothesis, people’s preferences for meet alternatives with similar metrics to legacy meat, when the most likely future is one in which alternative meat has the following attributes:
• At least 80% cheaper
• At least as tasty as the best meat today
• Consistently the same quality, every time
• At least as healthy, likely far healthier
• At least 100X less contamination issues.
• A longer shelf life
If the above predictions are accurate, shouldn’t our priority be to accelerate the production of lab grown meat by funding factories, research, etc...?
Why does the PTC Hypothesis matter?
Note that these estimates I’ve put out are sourced primarily from RethinkX and Tony Seba, who accurately predicted the solar price declines, rechargeable battery cost declines, and electric vehicle cost declines of the last two decades.
Read this for a highly in-depth report on all of this:
https://www.rethinkx.com/food-and-agriculture
I consider them to be a highly reliable source which we should take very seriously—however I’m interested to hear any insights from people who are more directly experienced in this space.
Do you think these predictions are directionally correct?
Glad to hear!
This is probably the crux of our disagreement. I think Humbird 2020 makes a highly informed and compelling argument against this view. (Paraphrasing his words elsewhere, “Cultured meat is a wall of no’s.”) Furthermore, Rethink’s work (where I also work) shows that cultured meat forecasts so far have been consistently wrong and overly optimistic, with more credible forecasts showing limited production through 2050, although perhaps these are not the time scales you have in mind.
I haven’t spent much time with the report, but from what I recall I didn’t find it especially compelling. Are there any particular attributes or analyses that stood out to you, besides the reputation of its publisher?
This seems wrong because raw materials are also required.
These predictions do not address consumer acceptance. It’s possible that people will not want to eat cultured meat: animal-based meat is already quite cheap (presumably even more so given the technological innovations your forecasts entail), cheapness might be taken as an indicator of inferiority, food neophobia, traditional values, unnaturalness, etc.
Probably no, but these predictions don’t offer any timeline so its difficult to evaluate.
Thanks for the insight, I’m no expert on this topic so I’ve been going off conversations with friends in the space, RethinkX, and I take a first principles approach to solving problems.
I read the study and the conclusion seems to say the top problems are metabolic efficiency enhancements and the development of low-cost media from plant hydrolysates. But there are a lot of other engineering problems.
However I didn’t see any fundamental problems (physics based) that would force a floor on how good it can get. There were and are plenty of engineering problems with making batteries & solar cheaper as well (and AI better).
I also took at look at the forecasting articles, and they all seem to revolve around explicitly looking at cell based meat predictions and the bad predictions made by startups in the space.
It might be much better to forecast based on the historical price declines of precision fermentation per kg over the last several decades which this covers: https://rethinkdisruption.com/the-roadmap-to-disruption/
“from what I recall I didn’t find it especially compelling. Are there any particular attributes or analyses that stood out to you, besides the reputation of its publisher?”
I read the entire report a few years ago, and I found it quite compelling. I’ve studied the s-curve adoption of many technologies and I’ve found the ’Seba Disruption Framework” to be very reliable. It’s not just their reputation, I’ve personally seen their predictions in other spaces be far more accurate than other prediction organizations.
I’m interested to know what you found particularly uncompelling about the report?
Let’s talk raw materials. The vast majority of the elemental components of meat can be sourced directly from the air using electricity. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. Some minerals and other elements (Sulphur Iron, Zinc, Selenium) would need to be sourced, which would entail transportation to a factory for processing. I asked GPT4 to calculate the cost of the needed mined materials for one lb of steak.
Sulphur: Typically found at about 0.3% in meat. Average cost: $65 per ton. Cost in one pound of steak: 0.003 * 1/2000 * $65 ≈ $0.0000975
Iron: Around 0.007% in meat. Average cost: $120 per ton. Cost in one pound of steak: 0.00007 * 1/2000 * $120 ≈ $0.000042
Zinc: Around 0.0035% in meat. Average cost: $2,500 per ton. Cost in one pound of steak: 0.000035 * 1/2000 * $2,500 ≈ $0.04375
Selenium: Extremely trace amounts, around 0.000035% in meat. Average cost: $65 per pound (Selenium is often priced per pound due to its rarity). Cost in one pound of steak: 0.00000035 * $65 ≈ $0.00002275
Adding these up, the total elemental cost of Sulphur, Iron, Zinc, and Selenium in one pound of steak would be approximately $0.044.
Each pound of meat needs ~4.4¢ of mined material. Every other cost is in the production process.
They did similar calculations for the cost of lithium ion batteries, which were over 100X more expensive decades ago and are now approaching the material cost.
I agree this stuff doesn’t ensure public acceptance, but I’ve never seen public acceptance not change in the past with other disruptions. Most people in the original PTC studies put price as their #1 issue, and that’s the same answer I’ve gotten from anecdotal conversations (including conservatives). There’s also a page or two in the report that addresses public acceptance.
Also if this takes most of the meat demand, economics of scale dictate that animal meat costs will rise, further accelerating the S-curve disruption.
The time horizon they’ve predicted is cheaper than conventional meat by 2030, and ~80% cheaper by 2035.
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?