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Comment by delecti | Hacker News Reader

> The core early adopters, the ethical vegans, who actually like the taste of plants are never going to make a lab made ultra processed salt bomb their daily driver

Why not? I think there's a false conflation of veganism and health food (and gluten-free, though that's not relevant in this discussion). I love burgers, and fried chicken, and crappy chicken nuggets, but I don't want more animals to have to suffer for my sake than is necessary. I disagree on how hyper-specific that niche is.

IMO the core problem is that meat is so heavily subsidized that it's hard for them to compete.

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> IMO the core problem is that meat is so heavily subsidized that it's hard for them to compete.

This is the real problem. Without all the government subsidies, a pound of ground beef would be closer to $30-$40 today instead of the $8-$10/lb it is now. $38 billion dollars in the US each year to subsidize meat and dairy, but only $17 million goes to fruit and vegetable farmers. It's completely backwards, especially considering the climate impact on meat and dairy farming.

Im calling BS on the $30-$40 a pound beef because ive raised my own cows for personal consumption and even if I paid myself $20 an hour for every second I spent with my cows, and assumed my alfalfa field usage could produce an expensive cash crop without fertilizer, and completely ignored the opportunity loss of only caring for 1-2 cows instead of 30+, that is still a cost WAY above what my beef costs.

Without taking a side, you've skipped every step past the field here. Transportation, butchering, packaging, and grocery store shelves, with profit margins, health / sanitation checks, and shrinkage at every step

not sure where the GP lives but in Canada even beef raised for personal consumption needs to meet most of those things you've listed, aside from grocery-related, and as someone who's bought directly from the producer (with 3rd party butchering) the price is not substantially lower than retail; scale likely makes up for a lot of the commercial supply chain costs.

Don't forget the massive costs of lobbying governments to weaken regulations and reduce inspections and also the costs of bribing meat inspectors, and the legal expenses and lawyer fees required to defend themselves from lawsuits surrounding their illegal activities, then also the millions in fines they have to pay to settle lawsuits they lose about their bribing of meat inspectors or colluding to drive wages down or whatever other illegal thing they got caught doing. You can bet all those costs increase the prices we pay.

Surely none of that is actually more expensive than just following the actual health regulations or they wouldn't bother to do any of it.

We do things at industrial scale because that saves money. If a local butcher could pay a relatively tiny amount for direct cow shipping, save multiple steps, and sell the meat for 60% of the grocery store price, they'd instantly be booming with business.

And? They still add costs, even though those costs are perhaps lower than on a small scale.

It means that when AngryData "skips every step past the field" they didn't save any notable money by doing so. Their beef costs more than unsubsidized industrial beef would cost, so when they call BS on $30-40 that is a valid call.

I still have to transport and pay for butchering and packaging myself which is done in a certified facility with sanitation checks. Oh sure grocery stores have to make a profit, but they also get better deals than I do for both transportation and butchering because they deal in bulk.

How much did your beef end up costing?

I believe it. Every summer we buy goat or lamb imported from Australia/New Zealand. It's usually less than $15/lb. Those two countries barely provide any subsidies for their farmers, and the meat is cheaper than my local farmers, even with their strict biosecurity regulations.

Australian citizen here.

There are massive tax, fuel, land tax, health care subsidies for our farmers.

Even doctors who cater to the remote areas where farmers dwell get extra payments from our governments.

https://www.health.gov.au/topics/rural-health-workforce/clas...

Even doctors who cater to the remote areas where farmers dwell get extra payments from our governments.

Very common in the United States, too.

There are a lot of doctors who get their student loans reduced or paid off by state and local governments in exchange for working a certain number of years in less-desirable locations. I've worked with a number of them.

There was an entire TV show based on it that ran on CBS for five years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Exposure

Yeah, it's absolute nonsense. I'm paying $34/kg for direct-to-consumer beef in Australia, a country with some of the lowest agricultural subsidies in the world, including delivery and at a premium markup, during a time that beef prices have hit a historical high due to processor capacity, and I'm getting prime cuts and roasts too, not just mince.

>Without all the government subsidies, a pound of ground beef would be closer to $30-$40 today instead of the $8-$10/lb it is now

Source? That seems implausibly high.

Using your $38B/year subsidy figure gets us $112/year in subsidies per American. There's no way you can get $30 unsubsidized price from that unless you think the average American only eats beef once a week.

… do they eat more?

I would have thought once a week is high.

Though median could differ from average. 12% of Americans eat half the beef

https://sph.tulane.edu/how-mere-12-americans-eat-half-nation...

Average American eat around 60 pounds a year, typically you eat less than a full pound when you eat so yeah they probably eat more than once per week.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-meat-usa

Given the $112 subsidies per year above, that would add $2 per pound of beef, that would slightly raise the price not balloon it to 30-40 as poster claimed. So he was bullshitting.

Average includes vegans, and I'm pretty sure they eat it less than once per week. It’s just how much meat divided by population. The previous comment shows that the consumption is not anywhere close to equally distributed.

The subsidies are also paid by vegans. Both the average meat consumption and average subsidy can be multiplied by the total population to get the total.

That doesn't really make sense, though, as rice — one of the main ingredients in the aforementioned product — receives the highest subsidy rate in the USA. A Beyond Meat burger should be cheaper than a meat burger thanks to subsidies.

> I think there's a false conflation of veganism and health food

Indeed. I ate at two different vegan restaurants in a city I visited recently and they both were on par with bar or diner food, but vegan. Plenty of vegans (I'm not one, but I've got eyes...) clearly don't have a problem with that.

I would argue the core problems are the massive amounts of salt and the fact that none of the meat alternatives tasted good. They all taste off.

The key difference between the old vegans and the new vegans is hiding in plain sight. It's the Internet. It used to be that vegans went to vegan restaurants and had their own particular tradition of vegan cookery. People didn't just become vegan in isolation like they do today. The acculturated vegans still exist and I think that's who gp is referring to in that statement. The Internet vegans are different but they aren't that numerous — few people even today would make such a change in their life based on something they read online.

Despite being a vegetarian and former vegan, this is not me wading into this debate to defend the figure provided by the OP of the original comment, but this is usually the source for the statistic AFAIK: https://scet.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/CopyofFINALSavi...

Regardless, it goes without saying (from other, more well-sourced research) that the disparity of subsidies and government assistance provided to industries that ultimately exist to produce meat compared to industries that produce fruit/vegetables is fucking absurd.

I'm struggling to understand the point you're trying to make well enough to know how to respond, other than to say vegan cooking traditions continue to exist and existed before the internet (though there were fewer vegans at the time)

People did indeed become vegan in isolation before the internet, just as they do today.

What exactly is the distinction you're trying to draw between "old vegans" and "new vegans", and how do you see it pertaining to this conversation (especially under a comment pointing out that plant-based burgers struggle to compete with traditional beef because of beef subsidies)?

Yeah, I generally think people make adult diet choices on their own.

People regularly cut out meat, alcohol, sugar, dairy, gluten, caffeine, fats, etc. based on things they’ve read, moral considerations, medical recommendations, and personal health observations, not because they’ve joined a community that eschews such things.

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