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Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Price-, Taste-, and Convenience-Competitive Plant-Based Meat Would Not Currently Replace Meat, published by Jacob Peacock on August 15, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.Also available on the Rethink Priorities website.Executive summaryPlant-based meats, like the Beyond Sausage or Impossible Burger, and cultivated meats have become a source of optimism for reducing animal-based meat usage.Public health, environmental, and animal welfare advocates aim to mitigate the myriad harms of meat usage.The price, taste, and convenience (PTC) hypothesis posits that if plant-based meat is competitive with animal-based meat on these three criteria, the large majority of current consumers would replace animal-based meat with plant-based meat.The PTC hypothesis rests on the premise that PTC primarily drive food choice.The PTC hypothesis and premise are both likely false.A majority of current consumers would continue eating primarily animal-based meat even if plant-based meats were PTC-competitive.PTC do not mainly determine food choices of current consumers; social and psychological factors also play important roles.Although not examined here, there may exist other viable approaches to drive the replacement of animal-based meats with plant-based meats.There is insufficient empirical evidence to more precisely estimate or optimize the current (or future) impacts of plant-based meat. To rectify this, consider funding:Research measuring the effects of plant-based meat sales on displacement of animal-based meat.Research comparing the effects of plant-based meats with other interventions to reduce animal-based meat usage.Informed (non-blinded) taste tests to benchmark current plant-based meats and enable measurements of taste improvement over time.IntroductionPlant-based meats, like the Beyond Sausage or Impossible Burger, and cultivated meats[1] have been identified as important means of reducing the public health, environmental, and animal welfare harms associated with animal-based meat production (Rubio et al., 2020). By providing competitive alternatives, these products might displace the consumption of animal-based meats. Since cultivated meats are not currently widely available on the public market, this paper will focus on plant-based meats, although many of the arguments might also apply to cultivated meats.Animal welfare, environmental, and public health advocates believe plant-based meats present a valuable opportunity to mitigate significant negative externalities of industrial animal agriculture, like animal suffering, greenhouse gas emissions, and antimicrobial resistance. For example, Animal Charity Evaluators lists "[cultivated] and plant-based food tech" as a priority cause area (Animal Charity Evaluators, 2022b), and a 2018 survey of 30 animal advocacy leaders and researchers ranked creating plant-based (and cultivated) meats third (after only research and corporate outreach) in their top priorities (Savoie, 2018). Non-profits working to research and support plant-based and cultivated meat production have received millions of dollars in funding (Animal Charity Evaluators, 2022a; New Harvest, 2021). Hu et al. (2019) describes plant-based meats as a potentially "vital" means to reduce the risks of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and some cancers.Others have focused on reducing the climate impact of food production and "the need to de-risk global food systems" (Zane Swanson et al., 2023). The private and public sectors have taken note as well; in 2022, the "plant-based meat, seafood, eggs, and dairy companies" foods industry attracted at least $1.2 billion in private investment activity and at least $874 million in public funding (The Good Food Institute, 2022, pp. 55, 85-88).This enthusiasm has been propelled in some significant part by the informa...