I expect you’re right—they’re gonna put up a fight of course. However, I think public trust in the media is relatively low following Covid etc. We’re all becoming more aware of how unreliable our sources of info are. That could inadvertently buffer the impact of counter-cultivated lobbying. If an attitude of ‘what you see is what you get’ becomes more the way, and cultivated meat is the same as slaughter meat in all aspects perceivable to the senses, then I think it’ll happen. Not as fast as I hope, not as slowly as you believe, but somewhere in between. I give it 10-15 years before it’s on supermarket shelves.
Generally when people turn away from traditional media, they instead get their information from social media, podcasters, youtubers, and influencers, all of which have even lower standards for scientific truth than the media does. This is how anti-vax conspiracy theories spread. I don’t think it’ll be particularly hard for the meat industry to turn a large segment of these alternative information ecosystems against cultured meat.
There are ample openings for the attacks on either side politically: To the right wing they can claim that cultured meat is attacking traditional values and culture, while to the left-wing they can claim that cultured meat is a monopolistic big-corporation enterprise.
Yes, and there are ample openings in favour of cultivated meat on either side, too. On the right, free market innovation + consumer choice. On the left, obviously, animal welfare and climate benefits (not to ignore the quiet majority in the centre who somewhat care about all of these things). I remain optimistic and look forward to seeing how things stand in the midterm future.
When you survey meat consumers, the majority of them say that they buy their meat from humane farms, when in fact of course ~95% of them are buying from massive factory farms (as that’s where ~95% of meat production comes from). So in people’s minds, they’re not switching from factory farms to cultivated meat, they’re switching from small independent farmers with great conditions to lab grown meat, which is a much less appealing jump.
I’m expecting massive food multinationals to be the ones bringing cultivated meat to market, e.g. Nestle, Unilever. And I think low-trust people will be put-off by this. I think people will want to side with the “small independent farmers” they think they are buying from.
Once headlines like these start appearing: New Nestle Lab-Meat Facility Opens, Expected to Cause Mass Unemployment For Small Farmers and Huge Profits for Corporate Multinational, I think more people still will be pushed away. Combine that with complicated and spurious health concerns, and people will stick with the default meat.
Politicians are desperate to pick up voters in rural areas, so I expect being anti-cultivated meat to become an increasingly popular political position. People who like the idea of cultivated meat won’t care enough to make it an issue they vote on, and farmers who are threatened by the technology will make it their number 1 voting issue.
I think your 10-15 year prediction is very plausible, but the year at which it arrives in supermarkets is more a technological question. I guess the question about consumer adoption is, once they arrive on supermarket shelves, what share of the entire meat industry will cultivated meat make up after 10, 20, 30, 50 years?
Do you expect most consumers to switch very quickly, within a few years to a decade, or do you think it will be a generational thing? I used to imagine people switching over incredibly quickly, but now I think generational change is much more likely.
I think you’re right about the spin—there’ll be an abundance of spin in every direction. In the end it’ll come down to consumer choice, where I expect millennial and younger gens to embrace the new products quite quickly (within a decade, yes), whilst older folks take longer to adjust. I trust that, eventually, the moral arguments will actually prevail once people no longer see ‘traditional’ farming (which, as you say, is mostly factory farming in practice) as the only option for getting meat.
I expect you’re right—they’re gonna put up a fight of course. However, I think public trust in the media is relatively low following Covid etc. We’re all becoming more aware of how unreliable our sources of info are. That could inadvertently buffer the impact of counter-cultivated lobbying. If an attitude of ‘what you see is what you get’ becomes more the way, and cultivated meat is the same as slaughter meat in all aspects perceivable to the senses, then I think it’ll happen. Not as fast as I hope, not as slowly as you believe, but somewhere in between. I give it 10-15 years before it’s on supermarket shelves.
Generally when people turn away from traditional media, they instead get their information from social media, podcasters, youtubers, and influencers, all of which have even lower standards for scientific truth than the media does. This is how anti-vax conspiracy theories spread. I don’t think it’ll be particularly hard for the meat industry to turn a large segment of these alternative information ecosystems against cultured meat.
There are ample openings for the attacks on either side politically: To the right wing they can claim that cultured meat is attacking traditional values and culture, while to the left-wing they can claim that cultured meat is a monopolistic big-corporation enterprise.
Yes, and there are ample openings in favour of cultivated meat on either side, too. On the right, free market innovation + consumer choice. On the left, obviously, animal welfare and climate benefits (not to ignore the quiet majority in the centre who somewhat care about all of these things). I remain optimistic and look forward to seeing how things stand in the midterm future.
When you survey meat consumers, the majority of them say that they buy their meat from humane farms, when in fact of course ~95% of them are buying from massive factory farms (as that’s where ~95% of meat production comes from). So in people’s minds, they’re not switching from factory farms to cultivated meat, they’re switching from small independent farmers with great conditions to lab grown meat, which is a much less appealing jump.
I’m expecting massive food multinationals to be the ones bringing cultivated meat to market, e.g. Nestle, Unilever. And I think low-trust people will be put-off by this. I think people will want to side with the “small independent farmers” they think they are buying from.
Once headlines like these start appearing: New Nestle Lab-Meat Facility Opens, Expected to Cause Mass Unemployment For Small Farmers and Huge Profits for Corporate Multinational, I think more people still will be pushed away. Combine that with complicated and spurious health concerns, and people will stick with the default meat.
Politicians are desperate to pick up voters in rural areas, so I expect being anti-cultivated meat to become an increasingly popular political position. People who like the idea of cultivated meat won’t care enough to make it an issue they vote on, and farmers who are threatened by the technology will make it their number 1 voting issue.
I think your 10-15 year prediction is very plausible, but the year at which it arrives in supermarkets is more a technological question. I guess the question about consumer adoption is, once they arrive on supermarket shelves, what share of the entire meat industry will cultivated meat make up after 10, 20, 30, 50 years?
Do you expect most consumers to switch very quickly, within a few years to a decade, or do you think it will be a generational thing? I used to imagine people switching over incredibly quickly, but now I think generational change is much more likely.
I think you’re right about the spin—there’ll be an abundance of spin in every direction. In the end it’ll come down to consumer choice, where I expect millennial and younger gens to embrace the new products quite quickly (within a decade, yes), whilst older folks take longer to adjust. I trust that, eventually, the moral arguments will actually prevail once people no longer see ‘traditional’ farming (which, as you say, is mostly factory farming in practice) as the only option for getting meat.
Looking forward to revisiting this post later!