They are still not there.
They're comically far off on the price side, but if they could get price-competitive with bulk 80% ground beef, they would capture a large amount of that market, I think.
This is, of course, true, but as a business proposition it's a bit daunting.
When you're competing with industrial agriculture, you're competing with a technology stack that's tens of thousands of years old, spans the globe, and employs literal billions of people. It's not quite the same as accepting a couple years of unprofitability when scaling up a social network. What if it takes centuries?
"The United States federal government spends $38 billion every year subsidizing the meat and dairy industries. Research from 2015 shows this subsidization reduces the price of Big Macs from $13 to $5 and the price of a pound of hamburger meat from $30 to the $5 we see today."
https://www.aier.org/article/the-true-cost-of-a-hamburger/#:....
(Why do I say the numbers don't make sense? a) That subsidy works out to about 35 cents per person per day. How could that possibly reduce the price of a pound of hamburger by a factor of 6? b) In other countries, a Big Mac costs at most $6.71. The $13 figure seems to be nonsense.)
Subsidies can have both > 1 multiplier impacts and non-linear impacts. For example, subsidies allow for artificial economies of scale to kick in that can then bring the price down significantly. However, were those subsidies to dry up, then certain thresholds may no longer be met and you may see again a non-unitary and non-linear rise in price.
Indeed this is the main theoretical reason why a society would be interested in subsidies: they can get back more benefit than what they pay for in the form of the subsidy.
This is dwarfed by feed subsidies. Feed subsidies don't convert directly to edible-food subsidies; the 'big five' staple crops are subsidized independent of 'specialty' crops, and the vast majority of corn is grown for feed and ethanol in the US, and is of a variety not used for any kind of human food production.
https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/primer-agricult...
Now, if I'd known to look out for it, I'm sure I could have picked and found out. But since I wasn't looking for a difference, I didn't notice one. And that's coming from someone who eats a ton of (real) burgers.
That’s the issue here, veggie folks think meat tastes gross and everyone who eats it is evil and carnivores think vegetables taste gross and vegans are just NPC henchmen for the Illuminati
Hilarity ensues. Thus, beyond burger.
In general I’d rather eat vegetarian than fake chicken or sausages, but beyond meat’s current product makes me feel optimistic about a future without methane emissions.
To you. Which is legit -- if it's not to your taste, that's fair. But to a lot of people, it really is close enough -- which is equally legit.
Sometimes it seems these BM and IF, etc., are trying to simultaneously cater to both customers at once. That will likely not work as they are different customers.
I mean, isn’t meat sustainable? As it’s renewable. Factory farming isn’t sustainable, but there’s plenty of pasture raised organic beef ranchers who grow meat in a sustainable way. If the goal is sustainability, then there are other ways that are likely healthier.
I thought the benefit was for ethical vegetarians who like the taste of beef but don’t want to harm animals.
Everything on Earth will be toast in ~5 billion years.
Human civilization/all life that wants to keep existing also needs to change dramatically in the next five billion years but I think that is to be expected.
Methane is a better example, but ironically factory farming has the answer there. Collecting manure in a waste pool and turning it into biogas turns it from a negative to a net positive.