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How to lower the price of plant-based meat

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Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#121

Post by [deleted] »

orange_tee wrote: post #38
hannob wrote: post #30

Interestingly it doesn't even discuss the obvious solution: Let people who buy real meat pay for the externalities. (Interestingly even in places where there's some form of carbon pricing - like the EU - this often doesn't cover a large share of emissions from meat production, as methane emissions are very relevant here - I'm not aware of any methane pricing scheme anywhere.)

Malnutrition is also an externality. I am not sure how healthy these options are but I suspect that substituting minced meat patties, for mashed vegetables glued together with cheap vegetable oils is not an nutritional improvement.

[deleted]

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#122

Post by downrightmike »

m463 wrote: post #96
hannob wrote: post #30

Interestingly it doesn't even discuss the obvious solution: Let people who buy real meat pay for the externalities. (Interestingly even in places where there's some form of carbon pricing - like the EU - this often doesn't cover a large share of emissions from meat production, as methane emissions are very relevant here - I'm not aware of any methane pricing scheme anywhere.)

You know, I wonder if a meat-based production system is a hedge against catastrophic/extinction events. For example, let's say we have another potato-famine style event. Even a bio-engineered attack that takes out a crop or crops. We could scale back meat production and use the crop capacity we use to support the "meat pyramid" to feed people directly until the crisis has passed. Subsidizing crop capacity might make…

Yeah, I think that is what the Danes did in WW2, and why they had more people survive the lean times when the Nazis took their food.

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#123

Post by nemo44x »

wyre wrote: post #60
hannob wrote: post #30

Interestingly it doesn't even discuss the obvious solution: Let people who buy real meat pay for the externalities. (Interestingly even in places where there's some form of carbon pricing - like the EU - this often doesn't cover a large share of emissions from meat production, as methane emissions are very relevant here - I'm not aware of any methane pricing scheme anywhere.)

As much as I would love to see subsidies ended on animal products, it couldn’t happen overnight without huge backlash. Lowering the subsidies over time and eliminating the power that the animal agriculture industry has over politics would do a lot to increase the number of plant-based eaters.

You get rid of subsidies and then poor people can’t eat meat. Good luck dealing with the political fallout from that. Subsidized meat is a special kind of a American socialism where the wealthy tax payers fund the subsidies so everyone else can eat meat.

Honestly, so many of the ideas for addressing climate just prevent poor people from participating. The upper middle class who are most concerned with these issues (and have the most political power) simply wouldn’t be affected much at all by things that make access more difficult and/or expensive.

Rationing in the name of “equity” won’t happen because these same people will actually be affected so the line is drawn there. We need more housing development but not in my backyard, etc.

I don’t offer a particular solution other than giving people incentives to eat plant based diets and using tax revenues to invest in engineering the problem away as much as possible.

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#125

Post by exyi »

sparrish wrote: post #2

It really shouldn't be called "meat". It should be called plant-based protein or meat-substitute. The definition of "meat" shouldn't change because you press some soy to look like a chicken leg.

The goal is to taste / look / behave like meat so why not call it plant-based meat? In the end, the properties matter, not the production process.

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#126

Post by tedunangst »

dabbledash wrote: post #41
avolcano wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand this. I've never seen a package of plant-based meat and found myself confused, much in the same way I've never seen a carton of oat milk and thought it contained dairy. What's the concern here?

I don’t know about the meat issue, but I’ve seen women in mother’s groups ask “what kind of milk” people were going to be giving their babies after they were done giving breast milk or formula. Some people seemed to genuinely think that something called almond milk is actually a type of milk in some meaningful sense just because of the name.

Wait until they find out peanut butter isn't a type of butter.

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#127

Post by bearbawl »

hannob wrote: post #25
cccc4all wrote: post #6

Cows and livestock eat plants and convert into meat. It’s natural and organic and proven process that’s been around for thousands of years. Ground up plants with food colorings and odd shapes are not meat.

> It’s natural and organic and proven process that’s been around for thousands of years. Which is a good example how "natural" and "been around for thousands of years" does not equal "is good for the environment".

First of all, I’m pretty sure animals live there, in the « environment ». And animals eat animals, in this « environment ». As far as tv documentaries present this to me (sorry I’ve never been in the real nature in the real life), it’s not « induced ».

The question then is more about how much we eat, what do we consider « ok » to eat, how many are we, and how do we farm to sustain all this.

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#128

Post by nemo44x »

wyre wrote: post #71
hannob wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on how you do it. There are proposals for carbon tax schemes that go like "we'll pay back all the income from the carbon tax to all citizen directly". You can imagine the same for methane. Pretty sure such a proposal would be popular.

A carbon-tax funded UBI would be popular, but ideally wouldn’t funding from a carbon tax go towards sequestering the carbon and other green initiatives instead of giving it back to consumers to spend on high-carbon goods and services?

It’s essentially what we do today. High tax payers consume more and their tax revenues subsidize things like Ag which make things like meat affordable to poor people.

So yeah, get rid of subsidies and replace with UBI and we’re probably in nearly the same place. Maybe a good deal of people would forego newly expensive meat and spend their UBI on the lotto?

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#129

Post by dragonwriter »

nemo44x wrote: post #123
wyre wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I would love to see subsidies ended on animal products, it couldn’t happen overnight without huge backlash. Lowering the subsidies over time and eliminating the power that the animal agriculture industry has over politics would do a lot to increase the number of plant-based eaters.

You get rid of subsidies and then poor people can’t eat meat. Good luck dealing with the political fallout from that. Subsidized meat is a special kind of a American socialism where the wealthy tax payers fund the subsidies so everyone else can eat meat. Honestly, so many of the ideas for addressing climate just prevent poor people from participating. The upper middle class who are most concerned with these issues (a…

> You get rid of subsidies and then poor people can’t eat meat

So stop subsidizing meat and spend the same money augmenting the income of the poor, then poor people will be at least as able to eat meat and be at least as well off when doing so as they were with the meat sibaidies, while those who choose not to will be even better off than they were with meat subsidies.

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#130

Post by bearbawl »

wtetzner wrote: post #40
hannob wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s natural and organic and proven process that’s been around for thousands of years. Which is a good example how "natural" and "been around for thousands of years" does not equal "is good for the environment".

Are we convinced growing these crops are good for the environment? Not to mention how terrible plant-based “meats” are for your health.

I’m actually pretty sure anything we do too much is bad somehow.

The question is more around the « too much » than around what we do.

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