Maybe, just maybe buying animal-products, where the animals didn't suffer, where they were raised species-appropriate, would help, as it would be a ecological signal as well.
If more people would do that, a lot more incentives would be there, to not let animals suffer just for human consumption.
Since I switched to only eating animal products, where I know, how the animals lived, I do eat a lot less meat. i do pay a lot more (and I do that consciously). And I have the benefit, that it also does taste so much better, that I really enjoy this in more then one way, when I eat it (sometimes pork-steak, sometimes ham, sometimes goat-salami). We buy at a local farm, that raise, slaughter and process the meat all by themselves, and produce at least 50% of the food that is needed for raising the animals on the farm itself. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioland#Certification)
So for me this was a viable alternative - but I could understand, if this is not possible in other circumstances of life.
> Maybe, just maybe buying animal-products, where the animals didn't suffer, where they were raised species-appropriate, would help, as it would be a ecological signal as well.
This is very hard to do in most of the "first world" places because agriculture or raising animals doesn't scale that well unless you do it on an industrial scale.
Now, you and me and a couple of others maybe can afford to pay extra for meat products, but for the vast majority of people who expect a shawarma not to cost more than 2-3 euros the reality is bleaker.
When you consider the real costs of unsustainable, industrialized agriculture† a very different picture emerges. The convenience of industrialized, globalized, corporate food infrastructure doesn't outweigh the long-term costs.
This basic misunderstanding of how food gets to your plate was featured prominently in a recent NY Times piece claiming the McDouble was the "cheapest, most nutritious" food ever.
The upfront cost reflects the way the food economy is structured. The food economy could be, and is being, restructured in small steps to bring the price in line with industrialized agriculture, if people would make the rational choice for health and lower long-term cost over convenience.
I can buy local pork for the same price as industrialized grocery store pork if I buy in bulk, but that does require a chest freezer. (Patchwork Farms, Columbia, MO)
† e.g. lower nutritional value, centralization, fewer jobs, lower wages, taxes for subsidizing fast food, questionable human rights and environmental practices, reduced biodiversity, etc., etc.
> Maybe, just maybe buying animal-products, where the animals didn't suffer, where they were raised species-appropriate, would help, as it would be a ecological signal as well.
This is almost impossible to do unless you have great connections and a lot of time and money to spare. Somewhere around 75% of beef and 99% of turkey and chicken farming is industrial factory farming. Organic and free range mean almost nothing in regards to animal suffering. Props to you for finding one of the few good farms.
If you're concerned about animal suffering not eating meat is the cheap and easy solution at this point. That's why developments like this actually make me excited.
The benefits to ending animal suffering, the environment, and maybe even human health could be amazing if they could produce molecularly identical artificial meat, but the one interesting aspect of it is that as a consequence of our wanting to avoid animal cruelty, billions of animals will never exist.
I know it might be silly to question whether a chicken or cow would prefer existence with a cruel end to nothing, but it's still kind of an interesting thought.
I am pretty OK with not creating experiential entities merely to put them through a lifetime of suffering and a painful end. My ethics don't put that much utility on total amount of experience in the world, so having fewer entities in pain is OK with me.
Like the other domesticated animals that once had a vital purpose in human society, there will be people who will continue to raise them simply because they view them as companions and not a commodity.
As someone who eats an entirely plant-based diet, it sounds like a terrible idea. If it tastes half as good as actual meat, then it will be much worse than even the cheapest, overprocessed soy protein 'burgers' in the frozen food section of the grocery store. Seriously.
Low quality meat can get a hell of a lot of milage, if you know how to use it. Obviously you aren't going to be sitting down in front of a plate of vat-meat and veggies for a candlelit dinner anytime soon, but as one ingredient of many in a cheap but serviceable lasagna? Sure!
Don't get me wrong, soy products are great and I eat a ton of them, but they aren't meat. They are a different food in their own right.
The only reason soy 'burgers' or 'dogs' exist is so that your vegetarian buddy doesn't have to feel left out at a cookout. They're full of sodium and preservatives and processed which is everything healthy people tell you to avoid. Not to mention if you put them in a bun with ketchup and mayo...
Besides, there are a hundred vegetarian dishes I'd be glad to eat before I'd want to eat a fake hotdog.
Bull. Shit. My wife is a vegetarian. I've tried probably 8-10 different brands of vegie burgers and chicken nuggets. They don't taste even remotely like meat.
Some do taste alright, I admit.
Another problem is price. You would think soy products would be cheaper than meat. Nope. So freaking expensive.
My parents are vegetarian, and I've had a similar experience, except for one product: Beyond Meat. Their chicken is unbelievably realistic; I could tell it apart in a direct taste test, but in the context of something like a burrito, I don't think I could.
Chicken is one of the blandest of the birds. That's why it has to be deep fried, covered in spices and roasted, or marinated/mixed with a bunch of sauce to taste good.
Chicken meat simply doesn't have the ability to be enjoyed on it's own like beef. Eggs on the other hand...
> You would think soy products would be cheaper than meat.
Why would I think that highly processed products of the isolation and retexturing and reflavoring of soy products would be less expensive than meat, which is usually pretty minimally processed? The raw materials cost of the soy product might be lower (depending on what else is added for flavor and texture, even that might not be true), but you can't really ignore the processing cost.
I would expect it because corn subsidies cause way more corn to be grown than necessary.
Now, lots of corn is great and all (well, not really), but if you grow corn all the time you are going to kill your soil (for one, depleting the nitrogen in the soil). Soybeans have the neat property of putting atmospheric nitrogen back into the soil. So if you want to grow lots of corn without breaking the bank on fixing your soil all the time, then changes are you spend some of the time growing soybeans. (Usually two seasons of corn then one of soybean, or one of corn then one of soybean).
Since soybeans are not the primary crop but are grown relatively in proportion to massively overproduce corn, I would expect soybeans to be pretty damn cheap. I don't have the market breakdown but my understanding is that the bulk of soybeans are just used as cattle-feed. I would expect this to depress the price of soybeans leading to very cheap soy products, even with the large amount of processing that needs to be done to them to make them human edible.
The large amount of processing might be the cause of the high price of soy products, but with supply of soybeans so high my suspicion is that low demand causes soybean product prices to be high. Soybean based food is still relatively niche and there are not all that many companies in that field so prices stay high.
In Econ 101, yes. As I said, "Since soybeans are not the primary crop but are grown relatively in proportion to massively overproduce corn, I would expect soybeans to be pretty damn cheap". Soybeans are not soybean products though, and a high supply of soybeans doesn't mean that soybean product prices should be low.
I posit that there is a low supply of soy-products caused by a low-demand for soy-products. Only a fragment of consumers are interested in soybean products, and demand is unlikely to change much as price drops. Worse, the vegetarians I know tend to be pretty loyal to particular brands of soy product. Basically, demand for soybean products is pretty inelastic and low. Not many people are interested in soy products, but the people that are interested will pay what they have to.
Premium soy products are the Bloomberg Terminal's of food. Almost nobody wants a Bloomberg Terminal, but a few people need a Bloomberg Terminal. Worse, the people in that market need a Bloomberg Terminal specifically. Bloomberg is unlikely to lease more terminals by dropping their price. If there were more demand for that sort of product, we would probably see more companies making suitable products for far cheaper. That's not the case though, so it is a shitty market to break into.
The issue then isn't low demand and high supply, it's low elasticity of demand and, for human food products, low supply. The original cited factors were irrelevant at best.
Sure, it has to be processed, but you get an order of magnitude more food per acre when you remove the cow step. I wouldn't have expected processing to be the vast majority of the cost.
I'm not saying they taste like meat. Be nice. There are plenty of delicious alternatives but unfortunately they're not at the grocery store, they're usually made by you in your kitchen. That's worth addressing.. but fake meat? no.
It doesn't even have to taste like normal beef. As long as it can be made tasty in other ways, I would happily pay more than for beef just to have another interesting source of protein.
There are plenty of plant-based products available right now that meet this criteria. Find a local Veggie Grill for a taste. http://www.veggiegrill.com/
