Otherwise the whole premise is totally pointless, other than for taste for vegetarians.
I would switch all my beef consumption to impossible if the cost were significantly lower.
From an investment perspective it seems kind of poor, given that there are already two players and likely more down the road. Will not be able to bear high margins on these kind of items. Cool that some are willing to fund the R&D even though returns are likely to be poor, though!
Competition will bring price down in longer run either way.
If we assume the inputs to impossible are significantly cheaper than beef, then cost of impossible should be significantly cheaper too.
But you're right, subsidies distort the equation. If somebody can chime in with what the level of beef subsidy is, but I'm doubtful it's enough to offset using vegetables over cattle. Should be an order of magnitude cheaper in a free market, once production is scaled up appropriately.
[edit : one can also try a simple-but-probably-wrong end-to-end estimate... Divide $38B by 325M to get $116 per person. Then divide by 57 pounds of beef consumption per person per year [4] to get ~$2 per pound. A quick search finds ~$4 per pound for ground beef, so one may naively guess the subsidies add up to at least a 33% discount.)
[1] - https://jia.sipa.columbia.edu/removing-meat-subsidy-our-cogn...
[2] - https://www.quora.com/How-much-is-the-average-pound-of-beef-...
[3] - https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/opinion/the-true-cost-of-...
[4] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/183539/per-capita-consum...
Also, if capital costs of building a plant are low relative to yearly revenue, say 10%, even at profit margins of 5%, over 10 years you got 5x of returns, and that's without counting other ways of raising capital.
A lot depends on scale, and meat has scale.
Just a question of valuation and ROI on a longer timescale. BYND stock seems wildly overvalued if you consider the very long run, for example.
You can't have a tech like multiple on a food/grocery product and expect a good long term return.
Is the cost significantly lower in non-subsidized markets like Netherlands, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Norway? Or do Impossible and Beyond charge more in those markets?
Vast majority of people will not buy meat alternatives if they are more expensive than meat.
On the other hand, if you can bring cost well below meat, many will choose it for economic reasons alone.
> I would literally pay double not to cause an animal to suffer ever again.
Think of it this way. It's not about _you_ it's about the _animals_ suffering. It's a selfless thing to do and fairly simple. Most foods are not animals they're plants! It gets easier.
Are you really saying that slaughtering animals is more "compassionate" than growing meat synthetically? And are you saying that the massive environmental cost of factory farms makes it more "integrated" with nature?
It's like you're deliberately trying to attach a negative connotation to synthetic meat by using the words "corporate lab".
Literally all first world amenities originate in a corporate lab! Are you suggesting we stop taking COVID vaccines because they were developed in Pfizer's corporate lab?
What do you propose we do instead to curb the world's desire to eat meat? You say "factory farms are terrible". Yes they are! And synthetic meat is the only way factory farms will go away.
I don't have any economic answers, however I think the vegan vision of a human race separate from nature is very scary, and not separate from one where we eradicate the natural world through industrialization.
I wish they added strains of imperfection that get stuck in your teeth or something.
I'm also trying to be as vegan as possible, but mainly for health reasons. Though after starting that, I now also think there's ethical reasons. Funny how that works.
Our family decided to adopt a more vegetable based diet and buy more ethically sourced local meat, especially beef and pork. The unit cost is higher but we spend about the same by eating smaller portions.
Substituting food like a burger for food like a burger isn’t doing much other than some warm fuzzy stuff.
But also many lifetime vegetarians, so probably able to adapt away from the craving.
I like Beyond just fine (but I prefer Dr. Praegers, so not exactly representative of the American public) but Impossible is enjoyable in its own right as a marvel of technology.
Just tried the nuggets for the first time this week - truly indistinguishable, aside from being a bit more consistent than real chicken.
I just tried them 30 minutes ago with some picky children. They could immediately tell something was amiss and wouldn’t eat more. I thought the chicken nuggets were adequate but the texture was smushy.
Impossible's marketing is actually the same as Beyond: "we were first to have a great replica!" No doubt the next competitor will say the same thing.