I’m working from brief conversations with the relevant experts, rather than having conducted in-depth research on this topic. My understanding is:
the food security angle is most useful for a country which imports a significant amounts of its food; where this is true, the whole argument is premised on the idea that domestic food producers will be preserved and strengthened, so it doesn’t naturally invite opposition.
the economy / job creation angle is again couched in terms of “increasing the size of the pie”—i.e. adding more jobs to the domestic economy and not taking away from the existing work. Again, this doesn’t seem to naturally invite opposition from incumbent food producers.
I guess in either case it’s possible for the food/agriculture lobby to nonetheless recognise that alt proteins could be a threat to them and object. I don’t know how common it is for this actually happen.
I’m working from brief conversations with the relevant experts, rather than having conducted in-depth research on this topic. My understanding is:
the food security angle is most useful for a country which imports a significant amounts of its food; where this is true, the whole argument is premised on the idea that domestic food producers will be preserved and strengthened, so it doesn’t naturally invite opposition.
the economy / job creation angle is again couched in terms of “increasing the size of the pie”—i.e. adding more jobs to the domestic economy and not taking away from the existing work. Again, this doesn’t seem to naturally invite opposition from incumbent food producers.
I guess in either case it’s possible for the food/agriculture lobby to nonetheless recognise that alt proteins could be a threat to them and object. I don’t know how common it is for this actually happen.