Hi Francis, I don’t think there’s much work on this, although I do believe an advocacy group tried this but found the results underwhelming.
Jacob_Peacock
Karma: 772
Hi Michael, thanks for engaging; just flagging this will be my last reply on this thread :)
Quickly reviewing the RethinkX report, it seems like the dramatic changes forecast on very short timelines have not come to pass:
Precision fermentation beef is not currently ~$2/kg (Figure 11)
30% of the US beef ‘tissue’ market is not from cultured or precision fermentation (Figure 12)
US cattle population is forecast to decline ~80M but remains steady at 94M as of 2021
Similarly, US chicken populations remain stable
The cost curves in Fig 5 does not cite any source for the data, but I suspect they’re using the Mark Post’s ‘million dollar burger’ as a data point; this cost doesn’t reasonably represent a price estimate since the burger was never for sale or purchased at that price, but does induce a dramatically negative slope on the curve.
I take a first principles approach to solving problems.
I don’t really know what this means, or how it differs from, for example, knowledge of chemistry, a field which generally builds on ‘first principles’ in some sense. In any event, the resulting reasoning, which sets trivially low input costs, seems wrong. For example, this reasoning would not explain why the price of all organic chemicals is not roughly uniform and similarly extremely low, since most organics are simply carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Furthermore, why would this reasoning not also apply to the animal-based chicken industry, ~eliminating their costs for feed and fuel?
I’ve never seen public acceptance not change in the past with other disruptions.
This seems circular: a technology wouldn’t be a disruption unless it was widely accepted. So, by definition, a disruptive technology is accepted by the public. This is also a result of survivorship bias—presumably some potentially ‘disruptive’ technologies did not result in disruption because they were not accepted by the public.
(Abraham and I both work for Rethink Priorities.)
I agree, especially with your points on “necessary but not sufficient.” In my view, this represents mostly a pivot from the PTC hypothesis. I’m not sure whether to view this as post hoc hypothesizing (generally bad) or merely updating-on-evidence (generally good).
I do think the question of “what percent of the ‘work’ is PTC?” is probably not well-defined, but is likely a worthwhile starting point for disagreement.
Thank you, Alain, and interesting to hear similar accounts for someone more closely involved with the industry!
Hi Jack, thanks for your comment and so thoroughly checking my sources!
I agree with your interpretation of Szejda. I intended to cite this study with regards to the PTC premise—that PTC primarily determine food choice—not the PTC hypothesis in full (that PTC-competitive PBM would largely displace animal-based meat).
However, I don’t agree that no one holds this view. I’d refer to three lines of evidence:
Direct textual evidence. In particular, I think the main source I cite is pretty clear cut:
the hypothesis proposes that plant-based meat “can compete on the basis of price, taste, and convenience, and just remove animals from the equation altogether” (Anderson, 2019).
I also don’t quite see your points played out in the other two main sources I cite. That said, it has been a while since I read them cover-to-cover, so if there are passages you think conflict with those I cited, I’d welcome them :) Here are the other two main citations.
When we’re thinking about what it is that we want to eat, every single one of us thinks about the price of the food, we think about how it’s going to taste. We may not be thinking about convenience but convenience is going to be a central factor. [...] We want to actually create plant-based alternatives and clean meat alternatives to conventional animal agriculture that compete on the basis of those factors and shift the world away from industrialized animal agriculture”(Cargill & Wiblin, 2018).
Despite rising awareness of the global impacts of our dietary choices, consumers continue to base their purchasing decisions primarily on price, taste, and convenience. Quite simply, reducing animal protein consumption is intractable for most people due to a lack of appetizing and affordable products that could serve as alternatives to conventional animal protein products. The challenge, then, is to innovate and bring to market diverse protein alternatives that are as delicious, price-competitive, and convenient as animal-derived food products are currently. By making healthy and sustainable alternative proteins comparable to conventional proteins in the areas of flavor, price, and ubiquity, alternative proteins become the default choice” (GFI Research Program, 2019, pp. 4–5).
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“Other researchers offer similar descriptions of the PTC hypothesis (Anthis, 2018; Kankyoku, 2022).” So there’s at least a perception among other researchers as well that some people hold these views.
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My anecdotal experience since publishing the paper. I’ve received comments from both people who ~believed the PTC hypothesis and from people who agree the view is prevalent. Similarly, see other posts in this thread agreeing that this view is widespread. (Noting that Abraham Rowe and I both work at Rethink Priorities.)
Hi Mark, thank you for your kind words and thoughtful comment! Also, welcome to the forum :) Please forgive my referring you to particular sections of the paper if you’ve already read them; I understand it’s a lengthy read.
Indeed, I consider general evidence on PTC in food choice in the section The PTC premise. Chris Bryant has actually subsequently pointed me toward Cunha (2018), which I think is stronger than what I cite there, but still subject to the same critiques. The paper is also not cited in any of the discourse on plant-based meats that I know of, although Chris has cited the instrument previously.
I agree with your concerns around COI—although I think the expected direction of effect is uncertain—and try to interrogate studies critically accordingly:
Sixth, the body of literature largely lacked pre-registration and analysis plans and thus is vulnerable to reporting bias, where authors selectively report favorable results. That said, for some studies, it’s unclear which direction would be “favorable.” For example, some authors were funded by the animal agriculture industry, and an incentive could conceivably exist to either exaggerate or minimize the impact of plant-based meats. In any event, there was no direct evidence of reporting or publication bias.
Cunha, L. M., Cabral, D., Moura, A. P., & de Almeida, M. D. V. (2018). Application of the Food Choice Questionnaire across cultures: Systematic review of cross-cultural and single country studies. Food Quality and Preference, 64, 21–36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2017.10.007
I agree that the PTC hypothesis is generally unsupported by the data available.
Glad to hear!
neither of these things are going to be true for longer than 1-2 years because of the cost curve of alternative meats and the technologies involved.
the most likely future is one in which alternative meat has the following attributes: • At least 80% cheaper • At least as tasty as the best meat today • Consistently the same quality, every time • At least as healthy, likely far healthier • At least 100X less contamination issues. • A longer shelf life
This is probably the crux of our disagreement. I think Humbird 2020 makes a highly informed and compelling argument against this view. (Paraphrasing his words elsewhere, “Cultured meat is a wall of no’s.”) Furthermore, Rethink’s work (where I also work) shows that cultured meat forecasts so far have been consistently wrong and overly optimistic, with more credible forecasts showing limited production through 2050, although perhaps these are not the time scales you have in mind.
RethinkX, an extremely reputable research organization in the space of disruptive technologies
I haven’t spent much time with the report, but from what I recall I didn’t find it especially compelling. Are there any particular attributes or analyses that stood out to you, besides the reputation of its publisher?
limit to the affordability of lab (or at that point optimized factories full of vats) produced meat is the cost of acquiring energy and the fixed costs of factory infrastructure.
This seems wrong because raw materials are also required.
If the above predictions are accurate, shouldn’t our priority be to accelerate the production of lab grown meat by funding factories, research, etc...?
These predictions do not address consumer acceptance. It’s possible that people will not want to eat cultured meat: animal-based meat is already quite cheap (presumably even more so given the technological innovations your forecasts entail), cheapness might be taken as an indicator of inferiority, food neophobia, traditional values, unnaturalness, etc.
Do you think these predictions are directionally correct?
Probably no, but these predictions don’t offer any timeline so its difficult to evaluate.
On the Malan trial, I write:
With regards to taste, Impossible ground beef specifically has not been subjected to any public taste tests. However, as reviewed above, the Impossible Burger, which is made of similar ingredients, has been found to taste equivalent in some studies. The study does not describe exactly the form of the beef in the steak burrito, making its taste equivalence less certain but probably still a reasonable inference. For the ground beef served on the build-your-own entree line, taste equivalence seems very likely. We can further surmise that the Impossible ground beef meals in the study were at least desirable: a follow-up survey found that 71% of purchasers were repeat purchasers (Malan, 2020, p. 189).
Sogari et al. (2023) found the Impossible Burger’s mean preference ranking in a blind taste test was not statistically significantly different than a beef burger (2.1 vs 2.5, respectively, indicating both burgers ranked around second on average). That said, the beef burger may have been significantly less salty than the Impossible Burger, potentially lowering the bar for taste equivalence. Another blind taste test found that the Impossible burger patty had a similar average liking score to a beef burger (Chicken and Burger Alternatives, 2018).[6] Moreover, complete meals containing plant-based meats tend to be somewhat better liked than plant-based meats on their own (Hoek et al., 2012, Table 6; Qammar et al., 2010, p. 554), although this trend may not be universal (Elzerman et al., 2011, fig. 2).
There are also numerous other studies discussed in the paper to which I’d refer you. I discuss some of the issues with the idea of “tastes the same” and “as convenient” here.
It seems intuitive to me that if you give people the opportunity to get a product that tastes the same, costs the same, is just as convenient and nutritionally identical, most people will shift.
I appreciate this intuition, but wold urge you to consider the empirical evidence alongside it.
Hi Brad, thanks for your comment. I’d contend that the Malan 2022 field experiment, among other studies, does give us some insight into behavior towards a putatively PTC-competitive plant-based meat. (There is also some survey data included which might cover attitudes, but I’m assuming you mean something closer to behavior. Let me know if not.) Can you clarify why you don’t find it compelling, if that’s the case?
Ditto, really appreciate your taking the time to so thoughtfully engage. :) A good day on the Forum! I’ll try to wrap up here as well.
(a) Thanks for this reference—I wasn’t aware of it! This definitely seems like useful evidence in the right direction and I agree with the XKCD’s comic sentiment. That said, it seems like there are still many possible contingencies where price might be a partial rather than full cause. This seems like a ripe area for further research.
(b) I agree, my list is incomplete, and these are good considerations. By the same token, I am no expert in clean power, so hadn’t thought about some of these challenges like intermittency. Along the same lines of this issue, focusing only on successful technologies also introduces a bias—for example, I imagine a similar graph as above which included nuclear would tell a different story.
I also agree there’s evidence to be gleaned from studying other sustainability technologies; we certainly shouldn’t ignore these other transitions. But I would like to see them studied more rigorously and systematically, including positive and negative instances; analogies and disanalogies; and contemporary techniques in causal inference.
Thank you, Fergus, that’s very kind of you! I would note that I think it’s quite possible and somewhat likely the Malan field experiment found a very small effect on beef sales at 0.3 percentage points. That said, there may have been a couple percentage point decline in poultry sales, which would be much more valuable. (I didn’t get in to this as it was besides the main point of the paper.)
Thanks for reading, Jonas! I think these are pretty reasonable takeaways. I’d only add that it’d be useful to define for yourself what PTC actually, concretely mean. Also, I don’t think many folks believe we’ll reach some standard of PTC parity across most animal-products within ~5 years, if that’s roughly what you mean by “the next years.”
Thank you, I appreciate the nuance! [Also, I realize it’s a long paper, so I quote some relevant passages, but apologies if you already read them. I figure it might help other folks following our thread as well.]
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“One could go away from your piece thinking there is a lot of evidence that should have one update against long-term PTC” Reasonable, although I did try to avoid this and emphasize the results apply to current consumers. So I also agree it “seems not warranted by most of the kind of evidence you cite” and specifically didn’t cite evidence that focused on future prospects to maintain a narrow focus on current prospects. That said, all else equal, I do think a worse current situation is evidence in favor of a worse future situation.
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That makes sense! I want to spend more time with those two reports if I have more time to focus on long-term plant-based meat prospects; thanks for pointing me towards them specifically.
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Concur.
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I think this is probably the crux of the our disagreement :) First, I think the PTC conditions you’re referring to are under-specified as I elaborate here, so it’s hard to refute without knowing specifically what you have in mind for PTC. (In the paper, I tried to focus on particular cases that limit the definitional issues or relied on working definitions that I specifically criticize, like passing blinded taste tests.) Second, I don’t think the sustainable innovations reference class is especially compelling: for example, most people had ~no understanding of CFC in refrigerants and didn’t think they were a basic necessity of a healthy life. Similarly, few people celebrate holidays that explicitly focus on the act of consuming fossil fuels. In contrast:
People feel a peculiar personal attachment to meat (Graça et al., 2015), believe that meat is necessary for health, feel that meat consumption is socially normative, and perceive meat as a nice and natural component of a healthy diet (Piazza et al., 2015). [And celebrate Thanksgiving where they ritualistically eat a turkey :)]
Some of my other work has touched on what I think is a more relevant reference class: plant-based analogs to animal products:
Our research has reviewed estimates of cross-price elasticities between margarine and butter (Mendez et al., 2023) and plant-based and dairy milk (Mendez & Peacock, 2021). The results suggest that behavior might be inconsistent across studies. Many estimates suggest that decreased margarine or plant-based milk prices result in increased consumption of the corresponding animal product (known as complementarity, the opposite of substitution).
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“From what we know from other transitions, we know that reaching a state close to PTC explains a lot of the variance in adoption” indeed is the core claim that I don’t think there’s actually much clear evidence on. Attributing causation in these sorts of transitions is very difficult; I try to lay out some of the challenges for PTC in particular the last paragraph here. I’d be interested what evidence supports this claim.
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Thanks for your question—forgive my quoting from the paper in response, I understand it’s quite lengthy! To your first question, I don’t think most interpretations of the PTC hypothesis would qualify tempeh as taste-equivalent (although, as I emphasize here, these factors aren’t very well defined).
I’ve included a case study on hot dogs specifically:
the home-goods-retailer-cum-cafeteria Ikea sells plant-based hotdogs that are equally or lower-priced, readily available alongside animal-based hot dogs, and “received a 95 percent approval rating” in taste testing in Sweden (Webber, 2019). In September 2019, Ikea’s plant-based hot dogs composed about 8% of annual hot dog sales globally (Southey, 2019).[4]
My rough guesses on changes over time:
Important alternatives to the PTC hypothesis might consider the role of future consumers rather than present-day consumers, who have been the focus of this paper. Future consumers might experience a large change in social norms or otherwise shift their preferences toward consuming plant-based rather than animal-based meats. This is a common feature of many animal advocacy theories of change (Delon et al., 2022), and advocates will potentially find it difficult to shift social norms in favor of plant-based meat.
Happy to answer follow-ups :)
Hi Sanjay, thank you for reading and your thoughtful comment! The evidence I reviewed here already spans a couple of years, so I do think it might be reasonable to extrapolate closer to 3-5 years. That said, there isn’t any analysis of trends of over time, so maybe not.
I agree conditional on the existence of similar alternatives, regulating against animal-based meat is easier than if those alternatives don’t exist. Can you elaborate on the why you think the arguments apply differently to lab-grown rather than plant-based meat in your third point? If one believes leaders in the field (eg, Ethan Brown, I think, but could be mis-remembering), we might eventually literally synthesized meat from plant sources; thus, plant-based meat would be meat, as would lab-grown meat. By transitivity, they’d all be “the same.” I myself don’t find the premise here too compelling, but it helps motivate the question: what exactly will be the differences between, plant-based and lab-grown meat that would diferentially impact consumer acceptance?
Hi Jack, thank you for your comment! I largely agree the future prospects of plant-based meat might be quite different from the current prospects and write:
Important alternatives to the PTC hypothesis might consider the role of future consumers rather than present-day consumers, who have been the focus of this paper. Future consumers might experience a large change in social norms or otherwise shift their preferences toward consuming plant-based rather than animal-based meats. This is a common feature of many animal advocacy theories of change (Delon et al., 2022), and advocates will potentially find it difficult to shift social norms in favor of plant-based meat.
I specifically do not believe that plant-based meats will necessarily never succeed. However, as noted in Footnote 2, historically, the PTC hypothesis has not been presented or understood as a multi-decade proposition, but a rapid transition driven by the likely false premise that PTC dictate food choice.
Whether plant-based meat is more promising than other theories of change in the long-run is an open, and, in my opinion, quite difficult, question. I generally think it’s hard to make a strong case for or against any particular animal advocacy theory of change on a 20-100 year time scale. Nor do I think the evidence to favor plant-based meats over other long-term theories of change for animals is all that strong.
I have lots of more thoughts on long-term prospects of alt proteins and animal advocacy I’d like to write, but that may have to wait for the next paper :) In the interim, if there are particular sources you think make a strong case for plant-based meat in the long-run, I’d be keen to read them!
It only took me 18 months or so :), but I’ve published my paper that partially addresses this question, Price-, Taste-, and Convenience-Competitive Plant-Based Meat Would Not Currently Replace Meat.
Gladly, thank you for your kind words! Sometimes people include health or nutrition as well. But there are really myriad factors that influence food choice, as I talk about some here, so I think there are still issues with models that simply add a factor or two (discussed some in the paragraph starting “Producing compelling evidence to substantiate just the premise of the PTC hypothesis would require an ambitious experimental effort.”)
Thank you!
Thanks for your kind words, Lizka!
I agree, with emphasis on ‘strongly update.’
This is especially helpful as people have (understandably) doubted this is the case.
I’m probably somewhat less confident here and think there may be other paths.
I don’t follow this point—presumably students would be an ideal population for studying school lunches? I’m assuming I’ve misunderstood :)
Agree!