Why Plant- and Cell-Based Meat Production Makes Sense

I've been in a couple of discussions with people recently about the benefits of plant-based meat substitutes. Some people don't like things like the Beyond Burger because the list of ingredients is so long and seems intimidating, or less healthy than plain meat.

I'm not going to get into the woods over the details of a specific product. What's more important is to consider the effects on the overall environment of plant-based meat substitutes compared to animal farming. Looked at it from that point of view, there's a clear winner, and it's not meat.

One of the strongest selling points of plant-based and clean meat is the efficiency of production: the conversion of inputs to outputs is vastly more streamlined than cycling calories through an animal. Lesser appreciated, but perhaps more economically compelling, is also the improved market efficiency: far less time and waste and far greater responsiveness to consumer demand for a range of products and species.

The article lists three key areas to consider:

• Supercharged timesaver: No pregnancy, no birth, no raising, no slaughter
• Solving the carcass balancing problem
• Adapting swiftly to shifting demand across species