Bruce Friedrich 🔸

• Bruce Friedrich 🔸 4 Jul 2026 17:36 UTC

  11 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: Yu­val Harari: philan­thropy prin­ci­ples + 3 AI-fo­cused char­i­ties he recom­mends (7/​4, link ud­pate)

  For anyone reacting with “disagree,” feel free to explain why.

  I imagine that Yuval will be interested in your thoughts, since he wrote the factsheet for EAs who are working on AI and then updated it when I offered to post it on the EA Forum.

• Bruce Friedrich 🔸 4 Jul 2026 16:07 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: mcauliffe’s comment on: mcauliffe’s Quick takes

  Thanks for this comment, William. I think that your third point is especially strong.

  While I’m not worried about the 140 million potential consumers for the reasons mentioned, and while I don’t think these bans indicate broad meat industry antipathy toward alt proteins (as discussed in the book), I have become convinced that I did not give enough weight to the potential chilling of public and private investment.

  Often these bans are cited for the idea that the meat industry is mobilizing against alt proteins, but most of the meat industry opposes these bans. And the bans are cited w/​r/​t their impact on consumers, but production is going to be so low for quite some time that I’m not sure that’s especially meaningful. And as per your first point, yes, I would see bans in Calif., NY, NJ, Ill., or other first-adopter states as a very big deal—but I don’t think that’s at all likely.

  But yes, I have come to understand the degree to which the bans can chill investor enthusiasm and perhaps also public investment, and I didn’t think nearly enough about those potential outcomes.

  One final point: I do think it’s worth remembering that US politics are not global politics. On this point, the EU is worse than the US, and that’s a huge concern. The rest of the world is better than the US. Since science and engineering are global, that’s important to keep in mind, too.

  I’m grateful to you for engaging with the book! For others, you can check it out at MeatBook.org/​​praise.

• Bruce Friedrich 🔸 4 Jul 2026 12:11 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Yu­val Harari: philan­thropy prin­ci­ples + 3 AI-fo­cused char­i­ties he recom­mends (7/​4, link ud­pate)

  I heard from Harari’s office, asking for a small update to the handout, so I updated the link.

Yu­val Harari: philan­thropy prin­ci­ples + 3 AI-fo­cused char­i­ties he recom­mends (7/​4, link ud­pate)

• Bruce Friedrich 🔸 2 Jul 2026 12:41 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Toby Tremlett🔹’s comment on: Cul­ti­vat­ing hope: cal­ibrat­ing the ex­pec­ta­tions for cul­ti­vated meat to end fac­tory farming

  Aha, well that’s lovely. Thanks! Can you share your email address, and I’ll float my draft through you? Very kind of you to offer that!

• Bruce Friedrich 🔸 2 Jul 2026 11:05 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Toby Tremlett🔹’s comment on: Cul­ti­vat­ing hope: cal­ibrat­ing the ex­pec­ta­tions for cul­ti­vated meat to end fac­tory farming

  Hi Toby—thanks. What does “curating this post” mean? Regardless, thanks for the kind words. I had not seen that “animal welfare has an evidence problem” post—the comments seem to be largely focused on hens and shrimp, so I’ll plan to post a stand-alone post about the alt proteins theory of change at some point, perhaps once my EAG London talk is live.

• Bruce Friedrich 🔸 1 Jul 2026 12:56 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: PabloAMC 🔸’s comment on: Cul­ti­vat­ing hope: cal­ibrat­ing the ex­pec­ta­tions for cul­ti­vated meat to end fac­tory farming

  Thanks so much for your note, Pablo. Here are a few quick thoughts in response to your thoughts—

  Is contamination something that could win consumers? (assuming price/​taste parity)

  I like your motorbike analogy, especially as someone who rides motorcycles when given the opportunity and who rides my bike and electric scooters very frequently, despite a string of injuries.

  But here’s where I think the analogy may point in the other direction: If I could get all the joys of those activities without the risk, I would. Similarly, people love meat. If we could give them what they love about meat (i.e., taste, texture, familiarity, affordability) without the contamination risk, why wouldn’t many of them switch?

  I don’t think we can really test that until products exist at taste and price parity. But for cultivated meat, at least, I’d be surprised if the answer turned out to be “no.” Plant-based meat may be different, since many consumers still see animal meat as nutritionally superior or more “real,” but even there, current penetration seems far below the plausible ceiling.

  Is cruelty something that could motivate consumers? (assuming price/​taste parity)

  For cultivated meat, I’d extend the motorcycle analogy: Imagine some other harm that comes from riding motorcycles that we know people care about, but they just love riding motorcycles so much, so they don’t think about it.

  Now, they are thinking about it, and they have a friction-free option. Why wouldn’t many of them shift, if they do care about the issue that’s been solved for?

  For plant-based meat, this might not be enough for a huge shift, but even the worst polling hits 21% for people’s enthusiasm to shift (and I discuss why I think that’s a soft number in the book). Recall that right now, the best plant-based beef products cost 2x conventional beef at retail, and the best plant-based chicken products cost 4x.

  If the products were identical in eating experience to meat-eaters and costs were equivalent, I’ll bet we could get to 20% penetration for plant-based meat and much higher for cultivated. And perhaps with the socialization would come more and more adoption.

  The Industry Incentive w/​r/​t both contamination and cruelty:

  There’s also the industry-side incentive. The meat industry has every reason to want a less fragile production system: fewer contamination scares, fewer disease risks, fewer supply-chain shocks, fewer reputational headaches. Once cultivated meat reaches taste and price parity, I suspect that is simply how a lot of industrial meat will be made. Incumbents will have overwhelming incentives to shift, and to sell that shift to consumers. This point is probably much stronger for cultivated meat than for plant-based meat, for obvious reasons.

  On economics, food security, and national security:

  I think this is where the case is already landing. It’s why Singapore and Israel were early adopters (funding their startups from the very beginning); why we went from zero governments funding open-access alternative protein science six years ago to more than 30 today; and 8 of the 20 most active recent patent holders are in China.

  I’d also point to the CSIS report, the letter from 11 Republicans to the Directors of Homeland Security and National Intelligence, the support from the UK, Indian, Israeli, and South Korean governments, and the fact that my book’s foreword was written by someone from the foreign policy establishment.

  The issue remains totally bipartisan outside the US and fairly bipartisan inside the US because of the economic and food/​water security benefits.

• Bruce Friedrich 🔸 28 Jun 2026 19:46 UTC

  6 points

  1 ∶ 1

  on: Cul­ti­vat­ing hope: cal­ibrat­ing the ex­pec­ta­tions for cul­ti­vated meat to end fac­tory farming

  I just read the full piece—fascinating. Here are some thoughts for your consideration:

  The economics of alt meats + the need for government (or similar) investment:

  In Meat, I dive into the economics of conventional chicken production as compared to cultivated chicken production and come out optimistic that cultivated meat can (hypothetically—i.e., the science and engineering can work) get to parity, though I also make clear that getting there is going to be incredibly hard and capital intensive, and that it’s going to require a lot of government support.

  (Another alternative would be for Elon Musk or Dario Amodei or Sam Altman or Jeff Bezos to decide, “hey, eliminating industrial animal farming—THAT would be a cool legacy.” I think that with focused effort, one billionaire entrepreneur, or Google DeepMind, Anthropic’s new life sciences endeavor, or similar, could also do it.)

  The big obstacle: Scale. The solution: Lots of government support.

  The huge obstacle is going to be raising the money required to scale sufficiently, which will require significant government support (or a deep-pocketed person like Dario/​Elon or a company like Google or Anthropic).

  Just six years ago, there was no government support to speak of (I recently listened to a July 2020 podcast, and at that point, the only government support was for start-ups and it was in Singapore and Israel; that was it). Now there’s quite a lot, though still not nearly enough, and not for CapEx, which is where that support is going to be really essential.

  I’m more optimistic than you are w/​r/​t both 1) whether we can do it with chicken and also 2) timeframes, b/​c I am more optimistic than you appear to be w/​r/​t incentives for governments.

  On 1 (the likelihood of broad adoption of cultivated chicken and pork): In reply to me on another comment, you agree with me that the best we can do with cultivated meat (CM) vs. conventional chicken will be 3x lower cost for CM; I guess you just see that as many decades down the line and an incredibly slow process. I agree with you that on our current trajectory, that’s way, way, way far away. But I think the incentives for governments to get us there are sufficiently robust that it could happen, if we can convince governments (especially China and S. Korea) to lean in (more on this below).

  On 2 (timeframes): I imagine our disagreement here aligns pretty perfectly to our disagreement w/​r/​t whether chicken displacement will happen. I see the case for governments to make it happen as sufficiently robust that if we can convince them to understand that case, significant displacement could happen pretty quickly. More on this below, too.
  
  China could do it, and the incentives align:

  As with solar and EVs, our best hope may rest with China (and there’s reason to be optimistic there, which I cover in chapter 10).
  
  The short version is food self-sufficiency, economic competitiveness, and a government that knows how to scale technologies once it decides they matter. China imports more food than any country in the world, and as Chinese consumers have gotten wealthier, demand for meat and animal feed imports has surged (its food self-sufficiency fell from 94% to 66% between 2000 and 2020 as meat demand exploded after it joined the WTO and economic growth went on a tear).

  That’s a strategic vulnerability, and President Xi knows it. Alternative proteins offer a way to produce meat with a fraction of the land, water, feed crops, and supply-chain fragility required by conventional meat. They also make animal disease irrelevant to meat production, which is no small thing for a country that has repeatedly been rocked by African swine fever, bird flu, and other livestock diseases.

  That’s why cultivated meat made it into China’s 2021 five-year agricultural plan and plant-based meat into its first-ever bioeconomy plan, and why eight of the world’s twenty most active cultivated meat patent holders from 2020 to 2024 were Chinese, most of them public universities. China did exactly this with solar and EV batteries, where it now controls roughly 80% and 75% of global production respectively.

  It could do the same thing here, and there’s a lot of incentive for it to do so; if China sees alt meats as a way to improve protein security, dominate a strategically important bioeconomy sector, and avoid another solar/​EV-style opportunity going to someone else, I think it’s very plausible that they lean in hard.
  
  Consumer motivation 1: Cleaner meat
  
  Re: your suggestion that “cultivated meat will have a hard time because there is no pressing problem that mainstream people perceive…”:
  
  In addition to what you named (AMR, pandemic risk, climate, cruelty to animals—I am dubious that any of those are going to be nearly sufficient until the products are at taste and price parity; I think you agree with me on that), there are also: 1) food contamination and 2) drug residues in meat. This is especially important for cultivated meat, since it is actual animal meat but produced without intestines, feces, slaughter, or the need to keep animals alive in crowded industrial facilities. That should mean dramatically lower risk of bacterial contamination, far less need for antibiotics and other drugs, and, for seafood, no mercury, dioxins, or microplastics.
  
  Salmonella and campylobacter come overwhelmingly from poultry, and the USDA’s contamination thresholds are shockingly lax; they don’t intervene on salmonella until something like 10% of whole chickens or 25% of ground chicken test positive. On top of that, USDA regulations permit more than a hundred different drugs in meat so long as they stay under an “Acceptable Daily Intake,” including ractopamine, ivermectin, and various other drugs. And even those lax limits aren’t reliably enforced: A 2024 USDA audit found that 20% of meat labeled “raised without antibiotics” was contaminated with antibiotics.
  
  I don’t think any of this is going to be a primary issue for governments, but for consumers, “same meat, less likely to make you sick” or contain drug residues or mercury seems like it could be a pretty compelling message. Again, this only really kicks in once there’s a price + taste competitive comparator (certainly cultivated meat, maybe plant-based meat).
  
  Consumer Motivation 2: animal suffering
  
  I also think that the cruelty point is stronger than most people give it credit for: As everyone reading this entry will know, when farm animal protection measures land on state ballots, they pass by wide margins, even in conservative states like Arizona and Florida. And Faunalytics and Oklahoma State polling found broad support for banning slaughterhouses, which is mind blowing (people would obviously not actually vote to ban slaughterhouses, but that does show an underlying discomfort with the fact that meat comes from slaughtered animals).
  
  The catch, though, is that the farm animal cruelty discomfort lives in what Daniel Kahneman called system two thinking (our considered moral reasoning) while food choices live in system one (fast and visceral), where taste and price rule (this is the heart of chapter 5). That’s the whole disconnect: People say they care, and mean it, and then order the chicken sandwich.

  My strong suspicion is that if a non-cruel option actually matched meat on taste/​price/​nutrition, you’d see meaningful adoption from people who’d be relieved to stop participating in something they already dislike but currently can’t escape, for all the reasons we know. This is (of course) going to be more true for cultivated meat than for plant-based meat.
  
  Plant-based meat has failed because almost no one understood the assignment:
  
  Re: “initial plant-based hopes have yielded rather disappointing results, at least compared to the expectations in 2021”:
  
  On the disappointing plant-based trajectory since 2021: I talk a lot about this in chapter 7 of the book, which is all about plant-based meat and why progress has been slow on taste improvement and basically non-existent on cost improvement. The 2021 predictions assumed parity would come fast (Impossible and Beyond were such a leap beyond anything that came before that scaling/​cost seemed like the easy part).
  
  Two things went wrong: First, most companies didn’t follow Impossible’s lead; instead of investing in the science of taste parity, they ran the failed health-food playbook of the past fifty years (lupine and lentils, low fat, clean labels), which guarantees a product that costs more and tastes nothing like meat. They weren’t the next Impossible; they were the next Gardenburger.

  Second, scaling turns out to be brutally hard, so prices didn’t fall much if at all. The result is that the best products still cost at least twice as much and only a handful are genuinely good. When 90% of what’s on the shelf is not appealing to meat consumers, it’s awfully hard to reset the public’s verdict that plant-based meat doesn’t really taste like the thing they actually want. And that’s the product they want: animal meat, or something indistinguishable from it.

  Aside: The book is clear-eyed about this conundrum. To scale, we need sales, and for sales, we need scale. What to do? I lean in on blends (animal meat with soy protein or mycoprotein) as one potential way to solve for this. But that’s a discussion for another time.
  
  Convincing the public and governments to support alt meats: GDP + food security (nature/​climate, AMR, and pandemic risk are secondary, at best):
  
  Re: “it will be an uphill battle, unless we convince the public and governments that supporting alternative proteins is a good idea”:

  For governments, I agree with you that the climate/​environment, AMR, and pandemic arguments (chapters 2, 3, and 4, respectively) are all strong, but I think you miss the much stronger arguments that can really move policymakers: GDP and food security, which are my focus in chapters 9 and 10, respectively (chapter 10 walks through the incentives for China, India, the US, Brazil, Europe, and small tech forward countries (Japan, S. Korea, Israel, Singapore).
  
  The economic case is straightforward: The US built its dominance in pharma, agriculture, and tech through exactly this kind of public investment in early-stage science and scale-up, and alternative proteins are the same play for a meat and seafood market worth around $2 trillion globally.

  This is why I was so pleased that Caitlin Welsh agreed to write my foreword. She is now at CSIS, focused on global food and water security, and previously worked on food security at the State Department and the National Security Council under Presidents Obama and Trump. That’s exactly the frame governments need to be using: Food security is national security. Matt Spence, who endorsed the book and helped push my thinking on this, came to the same issue from his time at the Defense Department and National Security Council (also under Obama). His core point is that the countries that can feed themselves, and help feed others, have strategic power. Alternative proteins can be a major part of that story.

  Conclusion: Not easy, but if it does not happen, that will (probably) be b/​c we didn’t bring the will.

  Thanks again for writing such a thoughtful piece. I think we agree on a core point: None of this is self-executing. The scientific challenges are real, the scaling challenges will almost certainly be even harder, and the current level of funding and institutional support is nowhere close to what success will require.

  That’s why I think the next phase has to be about building a much deeper scientific ecosystem: lots more scientists and engineers working on the hardest problems in a serious and sustained way. To do that, we’re going to need a lot more government support. That’s why GFI’s global battle cry and focus, all over the world, is helping governments to understand the self-interest of winning the alt meats science + engineering competition.

  We also need far more engagement from environmental scientists, global health experts, food security researchers, development economists, and national security thinkers. Alternative proteins should be treated as a mandate for these folks in the same way that renewable energy is treated as a mandate by climate scientists. That’s the focus of the book’s conclusion, which offers a bunch of thoughts about how people can help bring this home.

  I’m (largely) optimistic, but not because I think any of this will be easy. I’m (largely) optimistic because the prize is enormous, the early science is promising, the world has solved very hard problems before when enough people decided to actually try, and the trajectory of scientists and government support is going in the right direction.

  We could still fail, though, and that’s a key theme of the book; if we do, it’ll (probably) be b/​c we didn’t bring the will, not because the science and engineering were impossible.

• Bruce Friedrich 🔸 28 Jun 2026 11:43 UTC

  7 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: PabloAMC 🔸’s comment on: Cul­ti­vat­ing hope: cal­ibrat­ing the ex­pec­ta­tions for cul­ti­vated meat to end fac­tory farming

  Thanks Pablo, this all sounds right to me, including (and especially) your conclusion, that there may be a cost floor for cultivated meat around ¹⁄₃ the cost of chicken meat.

  I have heard some scientists argue that media recycling might allow us to bring that number down even more and also that we don’t know what we don’t know, but yes, your analysis does make sense to me.

  Obviously, getting to that is going to be incredibly hard. In the book, I argue that if we can convince governments to go all-in, price parity (and even better) for cultivated meat will likely:

  1. cost a lot less than what’s been required to get us where we are now w/​r/​t to solar and EVs (both the r&d and the CapEx costs); and

  2. have some huge advantages that governments care about, e.g., GDP growth and food security (this is chapters 9 and 10 of the book).

  I have a few other thoughts on your post that I’ll try to share later today, re: government incentives to make this happen faster than 10-20 years.

  Thanks for engaging,

  Bruce

• Bruce Friedrich 🔸 27 Jun 2026 17:07 UTC

  11 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: Cul­ti­vat­ing hope: cal­ibrat­ing the ex­pec­ta­tions for cul­ti­vated meat to end fac­tory farming

  I look forward to reading this full piece, but for now, I just wanted to reply to the reference to me and see if I’m missing something w/​r/​t your discussion of FCR.
  
  As you rightly note, I often cite the FCR of chicken as 9:1. This is the factory farming FCR; for organic or heritage breed farming, the FCR is far worse, according to WRI.
  
  It seems like you’re challenging this number, so I just wanted to check in. In my new book Meat (MeatBook.org), I address the 3:1 ratio that the poultry industry sometimes cites by referring to WRI’s analysis, which argues that these ratios are misleading for two reasons:
  
  First, they are mass ratios, so you’re comparing animal feed, which is 10–15% water, to chicken meat, which is 65–70% water. If you compare energy (calories), the best a chicken can do is about 9 to 1, according to WRI.
  
  Second, they often use live weight, which includes blood, bones, feathers, and other inedible bits.
  
  I’m guessing that if there’s a paper that lands on 2:1, it must be doing both—comparing mass instead of energy and comparing live weight instead of edible meat.
  
  A 2:1 or 3:1 calorie conversion would mean a chicken could turn feed into edible meat while losing surprisingly little energy to metabolism and building the bones, organs, and feathers that don’t become meat. I’m not a biologist, but that feels pretty unlikely to me.
  
  Curious what you think. Thanks.

• Bruce Friedrich 🔸 24 Jun 2026 19:47 UTC

  3 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: AI prob­a­bly won’t make fac­tory farms obsolete

  What about the argument that cultivated meat would be so much cleaner? None of the bacterial contamination that sickens and kills so many people (e.g., campylobacter, salmonella, E. Coli, listeria), and none of the drug residues (in the U.S., USDA + FDA allow 100 different veterinary drugs in meat at trace amounts)? That feels to me like a strong value proposition, no? Much cleaner, healthier, and safer meat—curious what you think.

  Aside: I talk about this in my new book, Meat, see meatbook.org.

• Bruce Friedrich 🔸 6 Mar 2026 13:03 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Kenneth_Diao’s comment on: On Be­ing Hope­ful for An­i­mal Liberation

  btw, this does not appear to be updated?

• Bruce Friedrich 🔸 6 Mar 2026 13:02 UTC

  5 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Kenneth_Diao’s comment on: On Be­ing Hope­ful for An­i­mal Liberation

  Thank you very much for your kind reply.

  I agree entirely with this: “we should use everything we can to bring about the change we want to see.” So yes, I am 100% in favor of activism/​moral suasion focused on a moral revolution.

  I’m working very hard to make that easier (by taking the cognitive dissonance of meat consumption off the table).

  This review of the book tackles the question we’re discussing head on: https://​​www.facebook.com/​​tracey.n.glover/​​posts/​​pfbid022kRFtjm2CnsLEhz3WZK1vAHUkHPdGXoAfStgha23VgYdpJzQTdQxUabJ92ApspoMl?comment_id=1631160018025772&reply_comment_id=1418693136049003

• Bruce Friedrich 🔸 6 Mar 2026 3:25 UTC

  5 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: On Be­ing Hope­ful for An­i­mal Liberation

  Thanks for this, but just to be clear:
  - I am a huge fan of animal welfare campaigns, and my wife and I give significantly to groups working on them.
  - I don’t recall saying anything that could be interpreted as “we’re fighting an impossible battle.” If I did say something that could be interpreted that way, I apologize. I’ve never felt that way, so I’m surprised and disappointed that I’ve said something you interpret that way.
  - I am a huge fan of both activism and moral suasion, both of which have done tremendous good, and I remain deeply involved in both.
  - I don’t think activism and moral suasion on their own will lead to a decrease in meat consumption (progress will be outweighed by growth in per capita meat consumption + population growth), and I would be surprised if anyone on this forum disagreed with that (I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone in EA suggest otherwise).
  
  Thanks for all you’re doing to create a compassionate world.

• Bruce Friedrich 🔸 4 Feb 2026 15:20 UTC

  13 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: Re­view of MEAT by Bruce Friedrich

  Thank you so much for the kind review, Chris. I welcome feedback on the book from anyone who reads it!

  
  Folks might be interested in this 2-page spread in the Guardian, too:
  https://​​tinyurl.com/​​bdzn2ywr

• Bruce Friedrich 🔸 1 May 2024 1:17 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: What AI could mean for al­ter­na­tive proteins

  this is a very helpful post—thank you! I just wanted to make sure you’ve seen that that Bezos Earth Fund’s $100 million AI grand challenge includes alternative proteins as one of three focus areas.

  See here for details: https://​​www.bezosearthfund.org/​​news-and-insights/​​bezos-earth-fund-announces-100-million-ai-solutions-climate-change-nature-loss

• Bruce Friedrich 🔸 30 Sep 2023 1:23 UTC

  2 points

  2 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Jacob_Peacock’s comment on: Price-, Taste-, and Con­ve­nience-Com­pet­i­tive Plant-Based Meat Would Not Cur­rently Re­place Meat

  Thanks for clarifying w/​r/​t strong form PTC theory—that’s helpful. I think it makes sense to focus on taste, price, and nutrition as the three factors that are absolutely necessary for success; we can address other factors later (or let private companies address those other factors later). Sorry that caused you some confusion, though I think you took an untenable leap with your assumptions.

  W/​r/​t “many times the penetration” and “huge, huge dent,” I think that will depend a lot on what happens between now and reaching price/​taste/​nutrition parity. But the numbers in your hypothetical discrete choice experiments are extremely promising (for the reasons already discussed). Surveys w/​r/​t cultivated meat are equally promising—and as discussed, this is all in a world where the products don’t yet exist and many/​most consumers are dubious that they’re even possible (i.e., survey respondents don’t think taste and price parity are possible, so they simply reject the premise—and still acceptance numbers are extremely high).

  W/​r/​t your four critiques of the early studies:

  For anyone who doesn’t remember what the four critiques are, here you go:

  1. These studies generally don’t find PTC to be the top three factors in determining food choice.

  2. The rankings in these studies reflect what people perceive as the most important factors rather than what would actually cause them to change their diets.

  3. The cited studies were designed primarily to investigate the role of a few particular factors in food choice rather than to identify the most important factors.

  4. These studies analyze the average ranking of each factor rather than how individual consumers rank the factors.)

  On the first point, the studies mostly find price and taste to be most important. That said, even if all four critiques are totally accurate, that just indicates subpar study design and doesn’t mean that the conclusions are wrong. We spent the rest of our back-and-forth discussing other studies and evidence, all of which point (IMO) to the importance of taste and price to food choice.

  As our subsequent back-and-forth indicates, there’s overwhelming additional evidence that taste and price are critical aspects of consumer food choice—both generally and specifically w/​r/​t alternative meats. For example, your chosen examples (the ten hypothetical discrete choice experiments, three commercial case studies, and the Malan 2022 field experiment) all indicate the critical importance of taste and price to food choice, as discussed in my first response to your article.

  On your final point: While I don’t think we’re going to decrease meat consumption globally unless alternative proteins succeed, that doesn’t mean that nothing else is important. A few reasons why:

  • First, my view that we need taste/​price/​nutrition-competitive products in order to decrease meat consumption globally doesn’t mean we need only those things (this was a big part of our back-and-forth, of course).

  • Second, we don’t know if alt meats can reach taste & price parity (we’re optimistic, but no one has ever done it). Efforts that cut consumption are valuable, even if they won’t scale.

  • Third, it’s education about the harms of industrial animal agriculture that motivated most people who are currently leading the charge on alt proteins, farm animal welfare, and more; there are significant and valuable outcomes beyond a global decrease in meat consumption.

  • Fourth, the best (I think) way we convince the early adopters to consume the current products is by making the nutrition case for alt proteins (i.e., education).

  I could keep going, but you get the idea—saying “we need to reach taste and price parity to decrease industrial meat consumption” is not the same as saying “taste and price parity are the only things worth working on.”

  Thanks Jacob—nice of you to give me the last word; I hope I didn’t abuse that privilege.

• Bruce Friedrich 🔸 24 Sep 2023 15:18 UTC

  19 points

  4 ∶ 1

  in reply to: Jacob_Peacock’s comment on: Price-, Taste-, and Con­ve­nience-Com­pet­i­tive Plant-Based Meat Would Not Cur­rently Re­place Meat

  Thanks for your response, Jacob -

  Here’s my/​GFI’s principal thesis on this topic:

  Taste and price are essential to the success of plant-based and cultivated meat, and it’s going to be very hard to reach taste and price parity for either product. So we think it makes sense to focus on those two factors. But that doesn’t mean that once we’ve solved those two factors, we’re done.

  As noted in a previous post, we have added nutrition as a third critical factor, mostly in the face of negative messaging around ultra processing and the critical role of early adopters (i.e. people who will sacrifice on taste, price, or both—but only if they see nutrition benefits). See, e.g., gfi.org/​​nutrition.

  The two quotes you add from me are not (I don’t think) different from what I said in my previous post, and they don’t discuss (let alone defend) “strong form PTC” theory. These are examples of me focusing on the things I think are most critical; strong PTC does not come up, and I don’t defend it.

  In the first case, “even if you think that is not sufficient, I would contend that that is absolutely necessary if we’re going to change the massive [upward] trajectory through 2050”—this is GFI’s view, and it’s quite different from strong PTC theory.

  And in the second case, since we’re at 1% plant-based meat right now and 0% cultivated meat, my statements that “we can have many times the penetration that we have right now if we can get to price and taste parity” and “if you can get to price and taste parity, you can make a huge, huge dent”: 1) don’t mean that nothing else is required; and also 2) don’t mean that we magically reach 50%+.

  Aside: It feels curious to me that you continue to claim I believe something that I am telling you explicitly that I don’t believe; you are essentially saying “you believe this and you’re wrong,” and I’m saying “I agree that’s wrong, and I don’t believe it.” This feels very odd, since we do have a few actual disagreements that feel important. Specifically:

  We still appear to have sufficient disagreement w/​r/​t the importance of price & taste competitive alt meats to our shared desire to see industrial meat production levels fall—I continue to think that alt proteins offer our only real hope of that happening globally, and so I’ll be curious to learn what your alternatives are and why you see them as viable.

  With regard to your four specific critiques: I think the overwhelming evidence of the importance of taste and price (including in the three sections from your paper) are a strong response to specific critiques about specific studies. i.e., the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence indicates the importance of taste and price to food choice.

  Finally and perhaps most importantly, IMO: I’ll be extremely interested to read what you think might decrease industrial animal agriculture globally, how big you think that difference could be (and why), and how you see that theory working in, e.g., developing economies where growth in meat consumption will be greatest over the next few decades.

  While I’m certainly enthused about the value of “defaults, labeling, classroom education, shifting social norms, and non-analog plant-based options,” two things: 1) those are the strategies of the past 50+ years; they work to a point and are absolutely worthwhile (they’re why I’m doing this work, e.g.), but they have not (so far) even decreased per capita meat consumption in the U.S.; and 2) I’m not sure how they scale. One especially promising aspect of alt proteins (IMO) is that science anywhere can result in more competitive products everywhere (same as solar/​wind energy, electric vehicles, etc.).

  In the end, I think we need a both/​and approach, but I think that alt proteins are the only approach that has a shot at slashing the global consumption of industrial animal meat.

• Bruce Friedrich 🔸 4 Sep 2023 8:08 UTC

  41 points

  7 ∶ 2

  on: Price-, Taste-, and Con­ve­nience-Com­pet­i­tive Plant-Based Meat Would Not Cur­rently Re­place Meat

  I’ve now read through all the comments, and I find the discussion super-useful, so thanks for prompting it, Jacob.

  Here are five points from me—apologies in advance for the length here.

  First: I think our main disagreement is over how important taste and price are to food choices.

  We agree with your thesis (that strong-form PTC is not defensible), though we also agree with the multiple commenters who suggest that you’re arguing against a view that almost no one holds.

  I’ll start my response by just reiterating our view that taste and price are critical to food choice, both generally (cite) and with regard to plant-based meat specifically (cite). That is, we don’t see a way to convince consumers to stop eating animal products unless we give them something that tastes at least as good and that is competitively priced.

  Second: I don’t think you offer convincing evidence to the contrary.

  In attempting to cast doubt on the importance of taste and price to food choice, you discuss: 1) ten discrete choice experiments; 2) three commercial case studies; and 3) the Malan 2022 field experiment. I think that the discrete choice experiments indicate the opposite of what you suggest, and so too the three commercial case studies and Malan field trial, once more information is added to the analysis.

  The ten hypothetical discrete choice experiments (HDCE): In these experiments, consumers said they would prefer plant-based (or in a few cases cultivated) meat over conventional meat at rates of 11% 19%, 27%, 25%, 22%, 41%, 45%, 51%, 63%, and 66% percent. These displacement numbers strike me as quite remarkable for a product that does not exist, in a world where (as you rightly note), people really like meat. And we get these very impressive numbers even though consumers were dubious about the question’s premise (plant-based meat at taste parity); as you note, the one time the premise was tested, “only 8% of respondents believed all the burgers would taste the same.”

  As an illustration of why there may be such variance: The 11% number comes from a Swedish study that called the comparator “plant-based meat-like burgers” that are “very meat-like” (“meat-like” is not the same as taste parity, and still 11% said they would switch). You note that another Swedish study found 45% - I’m guessing the framing was better on that one.

  You conclude: “In summary, the results of HDCEs conflict with the hypothesis that consumers largely prefer PTC-competitive plant-based meats over animal-based meat.”

  I’ve never seen anyone defend that hypothesis (that consumers largely prefer PTC-competitive plant-based meat over animal-based meat), but to me, these studies prove—rather than disprove—the importance of taste and price to consumer choice. There is no incentive for consumers to believe that plant-based meat will actually taste good (the one study that asked that question found that they don’t believe it) and no incentive for consumers to claim they’re excited about plant-based meat. And yet we still get extremely impressive hypothetical displacement numbers.

  The three commercial case studies: You look at Ikea hot dogs, Umami’s launch of the Impossible Burger, and Burger King’s Impossible Whopper. Your assessment is that these case studies “suggest that most consumers do not prefer plant-based meats, even for relatively PTC-competitive products.”

  I don’t know if the Ikea hot dog competes on taste, but here’s why I’m dubious: A recent (this year) Food System Innovations taste test of the most common plant-based hot dogs didn’t find anything that compared to conventional hot dogs (nothing even came close—consumers really disliked all the plant-based hot dogs). If none of the current commercial products come anywhere near competing on taste, I doubt the Ikea hot dog does (would be delighted to be wrong, obviously); I imagine it’s eaten by vegetarians, almost exclusively.

  I don’t think the Burger King or Umami Burgers prove your point either: You describe the difference in price between the Whopper and Impossible Whopper as “slight,” but I disagree: When these results were compiled, the Impossible Whopper cost 43% more than the regular Whopper: $4.19 v $5.99. That’s a pretty massive premium for a fast food burger, it seems to me; regardless, it’s definitely not close to price parity. At my local BK, the current numbers are $5.69 v $6.69, so still at 17% premium.

  You also don’t mention price w/​r/​t Umami, despite the fact that the sentence immediately following your discussion implies price parity. In fact, when that Umami survey was done, the Impossible burger cost 37% more ($7.99 v. $10.99). Today, it’s 16% more; you can still get a double burger or a deluxe burger for less and a truffle or bacon ranch burger for the same price. It doesn’t seem reasonable to me to suggest that a product that costs 37% more has anything to say about how a product would do at price parity.

  Far from contesting the PTC hypothesis, I’d suggest that sales of 15% (Burger King) and 20% (Umami) are pretty great. Regardless, nothing about these three examples appears (to me) to cast doubt on the importance of taste and price parity to maximum plant-based meat displacement.

  The Malan 2022 field experiment: Of course, we agree that taste and price parity, without more, are not enough for the kind of displacement we’re aiming for. The products need to be familiar, consumers need education about the healthfulness of the products, the products will have to be heavily marketed, and so on—none of that has happened much (if at all) in the Malan study.

  Most fundamentally, as Jack_S notes: “Familiarity in itself could go a long way to explaining the negative results in all the studies you refer to: all are comparing an unfamiliar product with a familiar product.” That seems right: As MichaelStJules notes w/​r/​t the Malan study: “In the UCLA study, unfamiliarity was also one of the main reasons (39%) for not even trying the Impossible option (table 23 in Malan’s PhD thesis).” It was actually the top reason.

  An important step that I think is missing from your analysis is looking at why consumers skipped the Impossible ground beef or only tried it once: In short, the students who only tried it once or didn’t try it at all (more than half didn’t try it at all) don’t think it competes on taste. BradWest notes that “Probably if you were to survey the steak burrito eaters, they would say they got it because it tastes better.”

  Those data actually are in the paper, and that’s right: First, of people who tried but didn’t like the Impossible ground beef, with open ended responses, taste parity was the reason (taste and texture: 53%; preparation: 10%) (table 28). And of the people who didn’t even try Impossible, just 11% thought it would be delicious, corroborating BradWest’s intuition (even as 59% thought it would be healthy and 82% thought it would be good for the climate).

  In short, I don’t think your interpretation of Malan, that it “demonstrates that only a small share of consumers might prefer PTC-competitive plant-based meat,” is correct. In my view, once key data from the study with regard to taste parity is provided, Malan strongly indicates the critical importance of taste w/​r/​t the success of plant-based meat.

  Third: The animal, environmental, and global health communities have been trying to convince the world to eat less meat for at least 50 years, and meat consumption continues to rise.

  The book that turned me vegan 36 years ago is now more than 50 years old (here). And in that time, even per capita meat consumption has skyrocketed, with no signs of letting up (cite). Even in the United States, the five highest years for per capita meat consumption are the most recent five (cite). We need a solution that can scale globally, and we have not heard of anything that seems likely to work, other than price and taste competitive alternative proteins.

  We like the analogy to renewable energy and electric vehicles (EVs): Renewables give consumers what they want w/​r/​t energy consumption, EVs give consumers what they want w/​r/​t personal transport, and alt proteins need to give consumers what they want from animal products. W/​r/​t animal products, if we can make something that is indistinguishable to consumers and that costs less, then over time (perhaps fairly quickly, especially with cultivated meat), we can replace the harmful products with products that cause far less harm (this is not all that’s required, but this is required).

  While campaigns focused on energy efficiency, walkable cities and public transportation, and reduced meat consumption are valuable, we are unlikely to convince a majority of consumers almost anywhere (let alone globally) to consume less energy, drive less, or eat less meat. Just as we need to change how energy is produced and vehicles are powered, so too we need to change how animal products are made.

  That said, of course we still need to do more—none of this happens magically. And that means:

  • touting the health benefits of plant based meat (e.g., here)

  • addressing concerns around the healthfulness and safety of cultivated meat (e.g., here)

  • contextualizing alt proteins alongside renewables and EVs in terms of need for government support (e.g., here and here and here)

  • thinking a lot about framing. For example, making clear that alt proteins support consumer choice and jobs in the heartland, stressing the economic value of these industries, and so on (see, e.g., this report that GFI & FSI sponsored from the Center for Strategic & International Studies, this paper we co-authored with the Breakthrough Institute, and our principal lobby leave-behind—the most prominent quote is from Donald Trump’s agriculture secretary).

  While these and many other factors will determine how many consumers shift away from industrial animal products, none of these factors works without price and taste competitive products. To get there, we need a lot more science and a lot more government support, so that’s where we focus.

  In the Sentient Media interview, the reporter indicates that your solution to skyrocketing meat demand is to “integrate natural plant-based foods — based on whole proteins like lentils, nuts and soy — into the larger food landscape.” Is that right? If so, I’m curious about your support for this strategy: Is this different in some way from what has been tried over the past fifty years (and then some), even as meat demand has skyrocketed? Is there some new angle of this strategy that you’re excited about? And how do you see that scaling?

  TBC, I’m a huge fan of diet-focused advocacy—it’s similar to encouraging people to insulate their houses for energy efficiency (and passing tax incentives to make that more appealing), convincing cities to adopt “meatless Mondays,” campaigns on behalf of bike commuting, and so on—all of these things are great (we should do them!), but two key points: 1) if they work, they pay relatively small (compared to what’s needed) dividends in terms of decreased energy use, miles driven, and meat consumed—they will not reach large displacement numbers; and 2) they don’t scale: They have to be adopted and implemented over and over and over and over (city-by-city or, at beast, country-by-country).

  But similarly to the theory of change of renewables and EVs, with alt proteins, if we can produce meat from plants and cultivation, this can just become how meat is made into the future (not implying it happens by magic, of course!). As with cost-competitive renewable energy, progress in one area of the world can scale globally (this is why GFI operates in Singapore and Israel—world class scientific institutions and governments that fund science).

  In the Fall 2022 Foreign Policy article that you cite, which I co-authored with Climate Advisers’ founder & CEO Nigel Purvis, we offer four key suggestions for such a global shift—but I don’t think any of those work for any intervention other than alt proteins. I’d be interested in hearing more from you on this.

  Fourth, I agree with Jackva that while of course meat is different from energy and cars, many of the differences work in favor of alt proteins, not against them.

  Jackva notes that “from what we know from other transitions, we know that reaching a state close to PTC explains a lot of the variance in adoption so it seems reasonable as a best-guess prior that this will be the case for the animal protein transition as well,” and he offers a strong case for this thesis.

  He also notes that while the analogy is not perfect, there are ways in which alt proteins will compare favorably w/​r/​t ease of replacement. For example, “alternative proteins are a better meat replacement than renewables are replacements for coal (no equivalent to intermittency), the food industry is smaller and less powerful than the energy industry, changing protein sourcing is easier than changes in the energy system that require more infrastructure, etc.”

  There are many additional examples to support his point, but I’d like to just note two of them:

  • First, we have the two largest food companies and top six meat companies (and others) supporting and investing in alternative proteins—they don’t own the farms, and if they can make more money from plant-based and cultivated meat, why wouldn’t they? A few months ago, I was in Brazil, and the Rebel Whopper at Burger King is produced by Brazil’s second largest meat company (top 6 in the world) - and it’s quite good. Tyson Foods has a very good plant-based chicken nugget (available at Target stores nationwide). And on and on.

  • Second and perhaps just as crucial, I think there is strong evidence that many, many people eat meat despite how it’s produced, not because of it (I think the numbers in your hypothetical discrete choice experiment discussion are also a strong indication of this). As I discuss on the 80,000 Hours podcast, I do think that if we can make plant-based and cultivated meat that compete on price and taste, that will make the advocacy work a heck of a lot easier—but advocacy (or at least robust marketing) will still be required, as I think is clear from that podcast and everywhere else I’ve discussed this issue in any depth.

  On this point (people eating meat despite and not because of how it’s produced), see here from the Sentience Institute: 47% of consumers claim that they want to ban factory farms, and 45% claim they want to ban slaughterhouses. The basics of this survey were validated by Oklahoma State agricultural researchers. Obviously consumers wouldn’t actually vote that way; my point is just that this shows a strong visceral antipathy to the way meat is produced today (see, e.g., pages 4-6 of the OSU report). I wonder if there have ever been figures like that for banning gas-powered cars or fossil fuels. Very strong environmentalists hate gas-powered vehicles and fossil fuels, but I’d be surprised if that was anywhere near 45-47% of the general public—in the U.S. or anywhere.

  Finally fifth: I’m not sure about your current thesis (the “strong-form” version of PTC).

  You define the thesis as: “if plant-based meat is competitive with animal-based meat on these three criteria, the large majority of current consumers would replace animal-based meat with plant-based meat.” Or, as Sentient Media quoted you for their article about your paper: “‘It’s just assumed, oh, you know, if only we had an identical thing that was different in key ways, everyone would just switch over,’ says Peacock, ‘when psychologically, I just don’t think that’s well supported.’”

  When Jack_S reframed PTC theory as “the idea that if we achieve PTC-parity, the market will automatically shift” and stated, “I don’t think anyone in the space holds this view strongly,” you replied, “I don’t agree that no one holds this view. I’d refer to three lines of evidence.” The second and third lines of evidence were perception-based; only the first line of evidence involved examples of what you consider to be support for the strong-form PTC theory.

  In my opinion, these are very weak citations, and your inference based on them is not (I don’t think) tenable.

  These are very weak citations, IMO: What you refer to as “the main source I cite” and call “pretty clear cut” is a podcast from April 2019 that is just 13 minutes long. It’s a general discussion of alt proteins and GFI—the host doesn’t ask about the strong form PTC theory, and it doesn’t seem reasonable to me to infer from my brief comments about the importance of taste and price that I think those are the only things that are important.

  What you refer to as your “other two main citations” are the 80,000 Hours podcast that also doesn’t discuss the PTC thesis and a 2019 GFI request for scientists to submit proposals to our grants program.

  In the 80,000 hours podcast from early 2018, I’m clear that lots and lots of people are basically addicted to animal meat: “no matter how good plant-based meat gets, our hypothesis is that there are a significant number of human beings who are going to want to eat real meat.” There’s also much in that interview that makes clear that I believe there will need to be marketing campaigns to take price and taste competitive products over the finish line and also that we’re going to need support from the major meat companies, and more.

  The 2019 science RFP is no longer online, but as Jack_S notes, even just within the very short snippet you include, “even then it’s not exclusively PTC, they also refer to these proteins winning out on perceptions of health and sustainability, and requiring product diversity.”

  In my opinion, if the strong form PTC thesis were widely held, you would be able to cite a position paper, article, blog, or something where the case is explicitly made (rather than two fairly old podcasts and a science RFP that’s no longer online). I suppose maybe citing a podcast could make sense, if the thesis were explicitly addressed. To indicate that it’s a widely held view, it seems to me that you’d want to be able to cite half a dozen either current (on line now) or at least fairly recent (not 4+ years old) and explicit examples.

  I put this point last b/​c I do think we have a disagreement that’s real, and I think you could pretty easily refocus your paper on real disagreements. Since I think most people reading your paper will be wondering what might decrease demand for industrial animal products, I could also imagine you spending at least a bit of time sharing what you think might decrease meat consumption.

  Thanks again for writing the piece and your engagement on the forum—I appreciate your commitment to this kind of analysis and also to robust discussion.

  What links here?

  • crunk004's comment on Cul­ti­vat­ing doubt: why I no longer be­lieve cul­ti­vated meat is the answer by Tom Bry-Chevalier🔸 (30 Apr 2025 22:00 UTC; 14 points)

• Bruce Friedrich 🔸 24 Aug 2023 8:14 UTC

  12 points

  3 ∶ 2

  in reply to: Jacob_Peacock’s comment on: Price-, Taste-, and Con­ve­nience-Com­pet­i­tive Plant-Based Meat Would Not Cur­rently Re­place Meat

  Thanks very much, Jacob—I’m in Asia for work at the moment and in all-day meetings, so it’s going to take me a bit to get back to this, but I’m grateful to you for getting this conversation going. I skimmed the discussion but want to read that more thoroughly, too. I should be able to read all comments with intentionality and offer a few more thoughts this coming weekend, I expect/​hope.

  [EDIT, Sunday night: I read through all comments this weekend, but it will be next weekend before I’m able to craft my thoughts into something intelligible and (I hope at least somewhat) concise; that said, I’m not sure I have much to add beyond what jacva & Jack_S (and I) have already written. I think the one thing that might be additive is just a bit more thinking about my (and GFI’s) belief that if alt proteins fail, industrial animal meat consumption will rise inexorably and globally (+ more on the analogy to renewables & EVs) - anyway, see you back here next weekend, and sorry for my delay; I’m grateful for the exchange].

  [Added point for clarity: In my response above, I was sharing our response to the three questions and 2 critiques that were sent from Sentient Media (SM). I thought those replies might be clarifying to others, since they were SM’s questions and critiques for this article about your paper.]

  Just four three quick thoughts in response to your precise questions—more to come:

  1) I do believe that the evidence is overwhelming that taste and price are necessary w/​r/​t consumer choice on food generally and, more importantly, w/​regard to any product that might decrease industrial meat consumption.

  Put another way, I don’t think I’ve seen anything in your article (or anywhere else) that challenges the idea that for something to replace industrial animal meat, it will have to taste as good (or better) and compete on price.

  I find the 17 citations here convincing (and Chris Bryant’s observation that “price and taste (and health) are always the dominant determinants of food choice” across many other studies with 100+ citations.

  2) I agree with your dubiousness about studies that simply ask people what matters to them, but I’m not sure it makes sense to discount what people say entirely—especially when it’s this consistent and also appears in the precise context we’re discussing (see here).

  See also KFC, Chick-fil-A, McDonald’s, and fast food generally. This feels (to me) like corroboration of the importance of taste and price (and convenience) to food choices. Wal-Mart is the nation’s number one grocer for a reason, I suspect.

  3) I like your question about how important taste and price are to displacement (i.e., 5% v. 85%, etc.); I’m going to think some more about it and will send along some thoughts.

  More to come—thanks again,

  Bruce