We Could be a Less than a Decade Away from the End of Animal Meat

Plant-based food that mimics the taste of meat – termed ‘alternative meat’ or ‘new meat’ – made plenty of headlines over the last couple of years with news of investors pumping billions of dollars into startups that are exploring a variety of high-tech solutions to create meat substitutes to as close as humans have ever come to replicating animal protein. A good majority of consumers appear to be on board with the overall concept. Most are aware of the detrimental health effects of processed meat. It’s old news that red meat, in particular, can be bad for the human body, and has been linked to issues from high cholesterol to cancer. A fast-growing number of people across the globe are coming to better understand the environmental toll the meat industry takes on our planet’s resources. And there are also many who have ethical and moral issues with raising and slaughtering animals for food. In short, markets are ripe for the products ‘new meat’ startups are offering. The main obstacle at this point is cost. Surveys show that consumers rank price as the second most important factor for those interested in purchasing plant-based meat. Unsurprisingly, the most important factor is taste, but even if you’ve got something delicious, if prices are twice as expensive as conventional beef, three times as expensive as pork, and four times as expensive as chicken – as data from Nielsen indicates – that’s a problem.

Perhaps we should first define what we mean by the term plant-based steak. The industry of the 2020s bears little resemblance to the veggie burger sellers of the ’90s, but neither are they the same as the more famous recent iterations such as the Impossible Burger or products from Beyond Meat. High-tech startups over the past few years have produced some astounding breakthroughs. These startups, many based in Israel, are offering plant-based meat that even celebrity chefs and barbecue experts are giving stunningly high ratings. Some ‘alt-meat’ products are now created using a 3D printer. Artificial intelligence programs help guide the printer as it extrudes layers of ‘alternative fat’ or ‘alternative muscle.’ These revolutionary progressions have yet to hit store shelves in most countries but are available in some select restaurants in Israel, and reviews indicate it’s getting nigh impossible to tell the difference between a high-tech plant-based kebab, for example, and its animal flesh predecessor. 

Anyone who’s purchased plant-based meat quickly becomes aware that what’s available currently on supermarket shelves is on the higher end of the price spectrum. And it’s not hard to understand why. Price parity comes down to a single factor: scale. Factory farming long ago mastered the art of scale, and while environmentally harmful and arguably cruel, the system has provided meat at more than affordable prices. Setting aside vegetarians and vegans who eschew meat for health, environmental, or moral reasons, consumers who are moving towards consuming less animal protein – so-called ‘flexitarians’ – are therefore faced with a difficult choice when a chicken dinner for a family is considerably cheaper than a plant-based alternative, no matter how delicious that alternative may be.

But the day when plant-based dairy and meat products are as cheap or cheaper than the originals may be coming faster than some assume. Soy milk has long been common in various Asian nations, but across Western Europe and North America, dairy products made from everything from oats to almonds exploded in popularity over the last decade, and as such, companies and corporations are ramping up production to the point where some predict that dairy and egg (made mostly with peas) substitutes will likely achieve price parity by 2023. Also, possibly as early as ’23, plant-based meats such as the aforementioned 3D printed ‘alt-meat’ will become competitive and then begin to undercut animal protein prices. Other alternative proteins primarily made with fungi or microorganisms may reach parity by 2025. Within a decade, cultured meat grown directly from animal cells is predicted to finally become at least cost-competitive with conventional meat. 

Are these projections realistic? Will large percentages of consumers switch over to plant-based dairy and meat alternatives in just a couple of years? It may sound fanciful, but when the sharply rising cost of animal meat is factored in – alongside growing environmental awareness and animal rights activism – it starts looking plausible. For those who believe the meat industry is unsustainable, and have concerns about feeding a planet with a population of 9 or 10 billion in a few decades, the good news is that we will not have to ask people to give up the tastes and textures we evolved to crave. The alternatives are here and are already highly impressive. Cost and scale are moving in the right direction and a future where it’s stranger to buy animal proteins than their alternatives could be coming faster than we think.  

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