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?
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?