Hi @matthes, I appreciate your writing this post and agree with much of it. Thank you for recommending my article as well. I wanted to note I updated it for publication (preprint) earlier this year. In line with your thesis, little new evidence has been produced recently, so there wasn’t much to update.
I did add a section on the effects of reducing alt protein prices, which gently pushes back against your framing that “alternative proteins are unlikely to cause harm”:
Price changes [of alternative proteins] might seem to have the most straightforwardly favorable case: decreases in plant-based meat analogue prices presumably lead to more sales and, consequently, less animal-based meat sales. However, this is not guaranteed. For example, a lower price may lead some consumers to treat plant-based meat analogues as inferior goods—or cheap substitutes—rather than a better deal.
Reviewing cross-price elasticity studies of plant-based meats, milks and butters, I conclude: “Throughout, estimates sometimes suggested that decreased plant-based meat, butter and milk analogue prices might cause increased consumption of the corresponding animal product.” Obviously, this is pretty counter-intuitive, but such is the evidence at present, in my opinion. We elaborate on the difficulties of interpreting this evidence in our review of butter cross-price elasticities.
Hi @matthes, I appreciate your writing this post and agree with much of it. Thank you for recommending my article as well. I wanted to note I updated it for publication (preprint) earlier this year. In line with your thesis, little new evidence has been produced recently, so there wasn’t much to update.
I did add a section on the effects of reducing alt protein prices, which gently pushes back against your framing that “alternative proteins are unlikely to cause harm”:
Reviewing cross-price elasticity studies of plant-based meats, milks and butters, I conclude: “Throughout, estimates sometimes suggested that decreased plant-based meat, butter and milk analogue prices might cause increased consumption of the corresponding animal product.” Obviously, this is pretty counter-intuitive, but such is the evidence at present, in my opinion. We elaborate on the difficulties of interpreting this evidence in our review of butter cross-price elasticities.