PhD candidateāeconomic and environmental stakes of alternative proteinsāUniversitĆ© de Lorraine.
AdvisorāONEI (French National Observatory on Insect Farming)
Teaching about Effective AltruismāUniversitĆ© PSL (Paris Sciences & Lettres)
Cofounder of the first EA chapter in France (2015)
Thanks for the comment! I did look into (micro)algae, but ultimately chose not to include them for two main reasons.
First, the vast majority of algae-based products currently on the market are supplements or ingredients (spirulina powder, chlorella tablets, etc.) rather than direct meat substitutes. There is some emerging research on using microalgae in meat analogs through high-moisture extrusion, but these efforts are still very niche.
Second, there is very little LCA literature specifically on microalgae as food protein (or studies on scalability, etc.). The studies that do exist often report high greenhouse gas emissions, primarily driven by the intensive energy requirements of cultivation, harvesting, and drying processes.
I havenāt looked into leaf protein concentrates though.
Regarding PBM pricing: the specific figures I cite in the paper and in the graph come from GFIās State of the Industry Report on plant-based meat which indicate: āPlant-based meat prices per pound are based on frozen and refrigerated plant-based meat subcategories from SPINS year ending 12/ā1/ā24. Animal-based meat prices per pound are based on data for fresh meat subcategories from the Circana year ending Dec. 2024.ā
Thank you for this interesting post on EA engagement with biodiversity funding.
However, Iām somewhat skeptical about the emphasis on cultivated meat as a default solution for biodiversity concerns. While I recognize its potential environmental benefits compared to conventional meat, there are several reasons to question whether it should be prioritized as heavily as suggested.
Iāve explored some of these concerns in a previous post, which Iād encourage you to consult. Briefly, the main arguments include:
The cannibalization problem: Available consumer data (Slade 2018; Bryant & Sanctorum 2021) suggests substantial overlap between consumers interested in cultivated and plant-based alternatives. This raises concerns that cultivated meat may primarily displace plant-based options, which often perform better environmentally, rather than conventional meat.
Timeline and plant-based trajectory: By the time cultivated meat achieves commercial viability, plant-based alternatives will have continued improving. Products like Beyond and Impossible burgers are already approaching taste parity in certain contexts, and the quality improvement trajectory over the past decade has been remarkable.
Cost considerations: Even optimistic techno-economic analyses project production costs around $20/ākg or higher in the near term, while plant-based alternatives continue approaching price parity with conventional meat.
Strategic resource allocation: The substantial attention and funding directed toward cultivated meat creates potential opportunity costs within the alternative protein space, where resources and political capital are finite.
Iām not arguing against all cultivated meat research (maintaining diverse technological options has value). However, I believe the current enthusiasm within EA, as reflected in your post, may be disproportionate to the available evidence.
Thank you for your kind comment!
Regarding pets, I know that the company Meatly has marketed a product with cultivated cells in the United Kingdom. But Iām not sure how widely available it is. My opinion is that products that include small quantities of cells will exist, but will remain in the premium pet food segment, similar to how insect-based products are positioned today.
Thank you for your comment!
To clarify my position regarding your question: āIt seems like you think that existing plant-based options are close to price/ātaste competitiveness already, was my above impression incorrect?ā
In my assessment, plant-based meat still has significant ground to cover in terms of both price and taste parity when viewed holistically, despite notable exceptions in the market.
For taste parity specifically, weāve made remarkable progress with certain products. Nuggets, for instance, have essentially achieved taste equivalence according to some studies. Fast-food burgers are also approaching this milestone. Additionally, we occasionally see standout products in various categories that come remarkably close to their animal-based counterparts, as exemplified by the examples I mentioned in my post.
Regarding price parity, while still distant overall, the gap continues to narrow, particularly for beef alternatives.
What often gets overlooked in this discussionāand what Iād like to emphasizeāis the rapid advancement of plant-based alternatives. The quality improvement over the past decade has been extraordinary. Meanwhile, cultivated meat faces a lengthy timeline before achieving significant market presence (even in hybrid formulations). Therefore, comparing an idealized future cultivated product against todayās plant-based options creates a false equivalence.
Iām confident that within the next 10-15 years, weāll achieve near-complete price and taste parity across numerous animal product categories through plant-based innovation. By then, the supposed advantages of cultivated meat may prove far less compelling than currently anticipated.
Hello Akash and thank you for these pertinent questions! Iāll try to answer all of them, but please let me know if you feel Iāve missed any of your points.
āWould commercially viable cultivated meat more favorably alter consumer preferences over time?ā
This is quite difficult to determine! Many studies on consumer attitudes make the assumption that cultivated meat would be priced similarly to other alternatives. Even in this scenario, it remains relatively unpopular and much less favored than plant-based options. For example, a study by Van Loo et al. (2020) attempted to define potential market shares of different meat alternatives through a DCE (Discrete Choice Experiment). This study found that cultivated meat had the lowest estimated market share among the alternatives tested. Interestingly, the study also observed significant variance in willingness-to-pay for cultivated meat, suggesting that some consumers are highly motivated and therefore less price-sensitive, while others want nothing to do with it.
Of course, the insights we can draw are limited: cultivated meat remains relatively unknown today, and even more so in 2020. We know that familiarity with a product influences consumer interest. We also know that peopleās stated preferences often poorly reflect their actual consumption behavior, with a tendency to overestimate their willingness to try and adopt new products. So my answer would be: we donāt know. And it would seem presumptuous to say yes.
āA non-negligible portion of vegns abandon their vegnism ā would introduction of cultivated meat improve retention of animal-free consumption patterns?ā
This is hard to say. From what we know from certain studies, while veg*ns generally express more favorable attitudes toward cultivated meat than the average population, they exhibit less willingness to try it/āpay for it. This suggests theyāre supportive primarily because they see the environmental and ethical benefits, although they themselves might not be particularly interested. And again, we would need to see whether plant-based meat wouldnāt serve just as well as cultivated meat in this case.
āHow would introduction of cultivated meat affect flexitarian dietary choices? Flexitarians eat a combination of animal- and plant-based meat. When cultivated meat becomes commercially viable, would flexitarians replace the former or the latter with cultivated meat?ā
Thatās an excellent question and one Iām currently trying to answer in my ongoing research through a DCE! I should have more insights in a few months. :)
āIs this true? It seems that as chicken did displace beef consumption by 40% (assuming consumption ~ supply) or am I grossly misunderstanding the chart above? Further, isnāt there an upper bound to how much addition can happen? Meat became cheap and widely available, incomes rose, people started eating more of everything, so consumption increased. But there is only so much more that one can eat, so at some point people started making cost-based trade-offs between beef and chicken. If cultivated chicken were to be cheaper than animal-based beef or chicken, shouldnāt we expect people to start making similar trade-offs?ā
Iām more familiar with European figures. Looking at France, for example, we donāt really observe a substitution effect between chicken and beef.
Regarding the United States, Iām somewhat surprised by the sharp decline in the mid-70s, which occurred much more rapidly than the increase in chicken consumption during the same period. This suggests an external shock to me ā perhaps due to the economic crisis ā which would explain why beef was hit particularly hard, being the most expensive meat. This is especially notable given that beef consumption eventually stabilized while chicken consumption continued to increase from the 2010s onward.
However, this would require further investigation on my part. In any case, based on the graph youāve provided, itās not obvious that chicken directly substituted for beef; there may simply have been a decrease in beef consumption, possibly due to external factors.
Furthermore, several sources are sometimes inconsistent regarding the evolution of meat consumption by product type, making it difficult to get a clear picture. For instance, in France, thereās a discrepancy between World Bank data and data from the Ministry of Agriculture. Similarly here in the US, World Bank data presents a different picture than USDA data.
In short, this is all quite complicated and would require an entire post to untangle. However, I maintain my position that the increase in chicken consumption did not lead to a major substitution effect for beef consumption. In my view, the reduction in beef consumption is explained by other factors, particularly economic issues, health concerns, and more recently, environmental considerations.
Hi David, and thank you for your comment!
I may have a certain bias since I work in the field of cultivated meat, but Iāve frequently observed a strong interest in cultivated meat during my interactions with other EAs. This seems particularly pronounced in France, but Iāve had similar impressions when engaging with EAs at international events like EAG. Truthfully, this wouldnāt be surprising, given that the demographic profile of EAs closely aligns with those who tend to be favorably disposed toward cultivated meat. This interest is also visible in the support some EAs provide to organizations such as GFI or ProVeg that advocate for cultivated meat, without the focus on cultivated meat being questionned.
Regarding the assertion that āit would be more important to determine whether alternative proteins (including cultivated meat) can become as tasty, convenient, and significantly cheaper than animal products,ā I believe this is far from self-evident. Unfortunately, recent exemples donāt necessarily support this perspective. While achieving these qualities represents a necessary step, thereās no guarantee it will suffice. Moreover, while I wouldnāt be surprised if taste parity becomes less problematic for plant-based products within the next 10-15 years, I expect price will likely remain a significant challenge for cultivated meat.
Thank you for your kind message, I really appreciate the feedback!
I often find myself hesitant to contribute to the EA Forum, concerned that my posts might not meet the forumās standards. Moreover as I feel more comfortable writing in French than in English, I tend to publish on my blog instead. Encouragement like yours is very much appreciated and definitely motivates me to share my thoughts more frequently.
I think weāll wait until weāve had at least one or two papers published before making the big announcement, which shouldnāt be too long. Iāll discuss it with the people at TII who will make the decision (I contributed to 5 of those 6 papers, but Iām not affiliated to TII).
Together with The Insect Institue, we have recently written several critical reviews of insect farming in terms of economic, environmental, consumer acceptability and waste recycling aspects.
Although we are not providing new data with these articles, we are compiling data from both the academic and industrial worlds to provide a critical view, which is still fairly rare. TII have 6 papers under review or accepted with minor or major revision.
All six preprints are now up and publicly available.
Have the environmental benefits of insect farming been overstated? A critical review : https://āādoi.org/āā10.32942/āāX2W60R
Beyond the buzz: A review of the prospects of replacing meat consumption with insect-based foods : https://āādoi.org/āā10.32942/āāX2RG89
Is turning food waste into insect feed an uphill climb? A review of persistent challenges : https://āādoi.org/āā10.32942/āāX2NG8C
Insect-based livestock feeds are unlikely to become economically viable in the near future : https://āāosf.io/āāpreprints/āāsocarxiv/āāfdbwg
Bugs in the system: The logic of insect farming research is flawed by unfounded assumptions : https://āāosf.io/āāpreprints/āāsocarxiv/āā7nmzj
Offshoring insect farms may jeopardise Europeās food sovereignty : https://āāosf.io/āāpreprints/āāsocarxiv/āā6wq4f
Thank you Bob, Daniela and Abraham for this initiative! I hope you will succeed in raising the necessary funds.
A little anecdote to illustrate just how useful I think your work would be: For one of my forthcoming papers addressing the issue of insect farming, I had the opportunity to realise how few studies there are on the question of insect welfare, particularly in a farming context. The studies on the sentience or well-being of insects that exist to date have almost never looked at insects specifically used for food or feed (notably the black soldier fly and, to a lesser extent, the tenebrio molitor.) Similarly, there is very little data on what constitutes good or bad rearing conditions for the insects used and the least harmful ways of killing them, particularly in the light of the practices currently favoured by the industry.
tl;dr: I strongly agree thereās a huge data gap that would be extremely useful to address in an attempt to bring this issue to the attention of decision-makers.
Congratulations Corentin on the launch of the association. Iām delighted to have been able to work with you on these papers.
Thank you for your initiative! Iāve been hoping for a while to see this kind of organisation emerge, as itās an issue that is becoming more and more worrying. For example, here in France, insect farming has been developing very rapidly for a few years, with two start-ups in particular having raised several hundred million euros and benefiting from strong government support.
If you are interested in the environmental aspect of insect farming, please feel free to contact me. I have done a lot of research into the scientific literature on the subject and have written several articles in the French media to temper the enthusiasm and promises made by the promoters of insect consumption, and I am currently writing a paper that will also address this issue.
Thank you very much for this article. I am a candidate for the Animalist Party in the upcoming legislative elections in France (although not very invested in the party otherwise) and took the liberty of sharing this article with other candidates having an affinity with EA. I have not yet taken the time to try to evaluate even roughly the impact of the Animalist Party in France, but I had the impression that during this presidential election, due to the decent score of the party in the European elections and the work of some associations (notably L214), the issue of animal welfare was much more discussed, with many candidates signing a charter of measures in favor of animals.
This being said, the format of legislative elections in France makes it very unlikely that a deputy from the animalist party will ever be elected, and perhaps limits our ability to negotiate with the other parties. In the European elections, on the other hand, we only need to obtain 5% to win a seat in parliament, which is much more attainable and has already been done by other animalist parties in Europe.
Thanks for your comment! Personally, I wouldnāt consider insects as a desirable alternative protein either, especially on moral grounds. However, they are very frequently included in the scientific literature on alternative proteins, and I think thatās actually part of the value of this paper: by explicitly incorporating the ethical dimension (alongside environmental, scalability, and consumer acceptability criteria), it helps highlight why insects stand apart from other alternative proteins in ways that a purely environmental or technical comparison would miss.
More broadly, the paper shows that insects are not a desirable option compared to other alternative proteins across most dimensions considered. I think this also constitutes a good argument for no longer including them in this category, as is still commonly done in the current literature.