by futurist Richard Worzel, C.F.A.
Would you rather have a piece of protein grown in a vat from bovine stem cells, or a nice, juicy steak from a steer? And would you rather have a tall, frosty glass of cow’s milk, or a tall, frosty glass of oat mylk?
Meat and milk are two of the most expensive forms of food, but also two of the most highly prized by consumers. But there’s a war coming over both, and it will start as a war of words.
Livestock producers generally are opposed to protein that does not come directly from a live animal being called “meat”, and dairy producers don’t want plant-based substitutes, such as liquids made from almonds, oats, coconuts, soy, rice, cashews, or macadamia nuts being called “milk”. Their reasoning is that if only wine producers in a certain region of France can call their sparkling wine “Champagne”, then the same should be true of protein derived directly from live animals, or breast milk from cows.
They are convinced that if the producers of such alternatives can’t use a familiar word like “meat” or “milk”, but have to use something unfamiliar, it will keep their sales from eating into the sales of livestock-raised meat, and traditional cow’s milk.
But they’re going to have a fight on their hands, and I suspect they will eventually lose. Let’s start with the reasons why these alternatives are emerging, and how good they are and will be.
Meat Substitutes: What, and How Soon?
There are two major kinds of meat substitutes about to burst on the supermarket scene: meat-substitutes made from plants, and meat made from stem cells taken from a living animal.
Lab-grown meat uses stem cells taken from a hair, swab, or feather of a living animal as a starting point, so no animals are harmed in their making. Such meats have been in the works – and in the news – since the so-called $325,000 hamburger, produced in 2013 by a group led by Professor Mark Post of the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands. Professor Post commented that the taste wasn’t bad, but it could use some fat to give it flavor.
Since then, the cost of producing meat from stem cells has fallen dramatically, as you would expect in a tech-driven field. As of May, 2018, a beef burger grown from stem cells, which is also called “cellular meat”, cost about $11 apiece, or $37/pound (all prices in US$). An Israeli-based company, Future Meat Technologies, which is one of several companies working on cellular meat, expects to be able to produce meat at a cost of between $2.30 to $4.50/pound by next year.[1]And Future Meat has also raised some seed capital from Tyson Foods, a major U.S. meat producer that wants to hedge its bets.
I fully expect that, ignoring all other considerations, meat produced from stem cells will eventually be cheaper than meat from livestock, perhaps within the next five years. Cellular meat will be engineered to have flavor and “mouth feel” as good as that which comes from livestock. And genetically and molecularly, the two forms of meat will be identical, which begs the question as to whether this is just a substitute, or the real thing. It may even be engineered to be more nutritious or healthier, if that’s deemed desirable by consumers.
As well, there are other considerations to favor cellular meat, as I’ll discuss in a minute.
Now let’s turn to plant-based meat substitutes. Such products represent a clear substitution, and the appeal is clearly to choose something that is both more environmentally sustainable and healthier than meat. And such substitutes have existed for decades, but they are now getting much, much closer to the taste and texture of traditional meat.
Here, again, there are a range of companies vying to win the field, including such companies as Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger. Indeed, both Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger products are being served in some fast-food outlets, and apparently have become quite popular.
Again, big strides have been made in flavor and mouth feel, so that plant-based substitutes taste and munch like meat.
So, if it looks like a burger, smells like a burger, feels like a burger in your mouth, and tastes like a burger, should it be called a burger?
But there’s more to this issue than taste and the price at the restaurant or supermarket.
Value Beyond Price
The expense involved in producing meat from livestock isn’t just in terms of dollars spent at the supermarket. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, a branch of the U.N., “Globally [livestock production] is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and one of the leading causal factors in the loss of biodiversity, while in developed and emerging countries it is perhaps the leading source of water pollution.”[2]
Raising livestock produces GHGs (like cow farts, which are largely methane), takes up a lot of land, and is inherently wasteful in that it requires a lot of resources to produce a single pound of beef.
According to a Time magazine article published in 2013, “Livestock production — which includes meat, milk and eggs — contributes 40% of global agricultural gross domestic product, provides income for more than 1.3 billion people and uses one-third of the world’s fresh water.There may be no other single human activity that has a bigger impact on the planet than the raising of livestock.”[3][Emphasis is mine.]
By one estimate it takes almost 1,800 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef.[4]Other estimates are more conservative, but still startling.
In fairness, it is largely in developing countries that most of the damage is done. Livestock production in the developed world, like the U.S. and Canada, is remarkably efficient.
Yet, producing a steak in a vat, or from plants, without having to raise a steer would still save enormous amounts of resources, and dramatically reduce a major source of GHGs, even among developed world farmers. According to the PETA website, ‘Memphis Meats’ [a company producing cellular meat] method of meat production uses 1/10th the water and 1/100th the land that’s currently used to raise billions of cows, pigs, and chickens each year. The process also produces less waste and cuts energy consumption in half.”[5]
A 2017 study, for instance, found that if all Americans gave up eating meat, the United States would be close to meeting the GHG goals agreed to by former President Obama in the Paris Accord.[6]
Meanwhile, plant-based substitutes can also be much healthier. They are largely composed of various kinds of vegetables, and do not have the saturated fats of most meats, and are less likely to cause heart attacks, strokes, and various kinds of cancer. So, not only are they better for the environment, they are typically (but not inevitably) better for the consumer.
So, there are real values to alternative meats that go beyond just price per pound.
But livestock producers are not going to go without a fight.
The War of the Words: A Steak by Any Other Name?
Animal protein produced from a lab-developed process is looking for a name, and there are a wide range being considered. I’m guessing that “slaughter-free meat” will win because, like “non-fiction” and “tubeless tires”, it starts with something people know, and then includes a perceived ethical benefit. Other possibilities are ethical meat, clean meat, cell-based meat, cellular meat, and cultured meat. (There are probably more, but these are the ones I’ve seen.)
Plant-based meat-substitutes are also seeking names that work off an association with meat, like “Beyond Meat” and “Impossible Burger”, both of which are brand names. Some of the other names being tried are things like plant-based meat, vegetable steak, meatless sausages, soy sausages, and bacon-flavored strips.
Meanwhile, traditional meat and dairy producers are lobbying for much less appetizing names, like “lab grown”, “in vitro”, or “test tube” meat. I’m actually surprised that they haven’t tried for “Franken-meats” or “Franken-milk”, to build on the tactics of anti-GMO activists.
Yet, eventually the producers of meat and dairy alternatives will find labels and price-points that work, and then it will come down to what consumers really want. All that traditional producers can do is slow the invasion; I don’t believe they can stop it, particularly because of the environmental and health benefits. Indeed, many of the groups that opposed GMOs are backing meat- and dairy-substitutes, such as PETA[7]and environmental groups like Greenpeace[8].
And One More Thing…
Thinking about dairy specifically, what happens if it becomes possible, as I believe it will, to create large quantities of humanmilk from stem cells or other ex vitro(lab-based) means? If human milk were shown to be healthier for humans, would that provide a different kind of competition for cow’s milk?
And would consumers be able to overcome the potential “yuck!” factor? I have no idea, but I suspect we’ll find out.
Who Will Win?
On paper, you can look at two sports teams’ line-ups and decide who should win, but in the real world, upsets happen. As they say in sports, “That’s why they play the games!”
Likewise, based on well-established trends in human health, and concerns about climate change and the environment, I would conclude that the odds, over time, are overwhelmingly in favor of meat- and dairy-substitutes taking a very healthy bite out of the market share of traditional producers.
Yet, as Monsanto proved in the GMO debacle, it is possible for large corporations, moving into the market for meat- and dairy-substitutes, to do such a lousy PR job that they can still snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. We’ll see.
And that’s why they play the games…
© Copyright, IF Research, April 2019.
[1]Peters, Adele, “Lab-Grown Meat Is Getting Cheap Enough For Anyone To Buy”, Fast Companywebsite, https://www.fastcompany.com/40565582/lab-grown-meat-is-getting-cheap-enough-for-anyone-to-buy
[2]Steinfeld, Henning; Gerber, Pierre; Wassenaar, Tom; Castel, Vincent; Rosales, Mauricio; de Haan, Cees (2006), Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options (PDF), Rome: FAO.
[3]Walsh, Bryan, “The Triple Whopper Environmental Impact of Global Meat Production”, Timemagazine, 16 Dec. 2013, webite http://science.time.com/2013/12/16/the-triple-whopper-environmental-impact-of-global-meat-production/
[4]“Meat’s large water footprint”, food tank website, https://foodtank.com/news/2013/12/why-meat-eats-resources/
[5]“Yes, This Is Actually Meat, but No Animal Died for It”, 21 March 2017, PETA website, https://www.peta.org/living/food/memphis-meats-debuts-lab-grown-chicken-clean-meat/
[6]Van der Zee, Bibi, “ What is the true cost of eating meat?”, The Guardian newspaper, 7 May 2017, website: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/07/true-cost-of-eating-meat-environment-health-animal-welfare
[7]https://www.peta.org/living/food/memphis-meats-debuts-lab-grown-chicken-clean-meat/
[8]https://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/greenpeace-launches-campaign-to-cut-meat-dairy-consumption/
