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

Plant-based meats, like the Beyond Sausage or Impossible Burger, and cultivated meats have become a source of optimism for reducing animal-based meat usage. Public health, environmental, and animal welfare advocates aim to mitigate the myriad harms of meat usage. The price, taste, and convenience (PTC) hypothesis posits that 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. The PTC hypothesis rests on the premise that PTC primarily drive food choice. The PTC hypothesis and premise are both likely false. A majority of current consumers would continue eating primarily animal-based meat even if plant-based meats were PTC-competitive. PTC do not mainly determine food choices of current consumers; social and psychological factors also play important roles. Although not examined here, there may exist other viable approaches to drive the replacement of animal-based meats with plant-based meats. There is insufficient empirical evidence to more precisely estimate or optimize the current (or future) impacts of plant-based meat. To rectify this, consider funding: research measuring the effects of plant-based meat sales on displacement of animal-based meat; research comparing the effects of plant-based meats with other interventions to reduce animal-based meat usage; and informed (non-blinded) taste tests to benchmark current plant-based meats and enable measurements of taste improvement over time.