The falling price of slaughter-free meat

Continuing my republishing of 2022 columns, this one was published in Lake Champlain Weekly on June 8th.

Common Sense predicted in 2014 that in vitro (lab grown) meat would become cheaper than meat from animal carcasses and would replace slaughter meat, first in sausages, lasagnas, and burgers, and later in most other contexts. The first lab grown burger had been produced the previous year, funded by Google founder, Sergey Brin, and had cost $330,000. The price has indeed fallen a lot since then, to around $10, but is still more than slaughter meat.

So burgers made from in vitro meat – variously called “slaughter-free”, “synthetic”, and “cultured” meat – is still a specialty product, even if it is no longer the exclusive preserve of Silicon Valley billionaires. It is marketed as a cruelty–free alternative to meat, and many big city restaurants can offer it as an alternative patty for your burger.

The rate at which the price is declining will slow, of course. It has fallen from the price of a house to the price of a slightly expensive burger in just eight years. It will not take another eight for it to be cheaper than slaughter-meat.

There will be cultural resistance at first, but it will soon be commonplace. Meat served on the bone – which lab grown meat cannot be at present – will be the specialty product and slaughter-free will be the norm.

The more interesting question is not about the technological change, which is now established and on a clear path to successfully competing on price. It is the cultural change that is harder to anticipate. In the short term, some people will resist. Some people resist all change, for a while. Most people will neither notice nor care. The product is chemically-identical to slaughter-meat, so the notion that health or taste factors will be relevant is ridiculous.

Cultural changes tend to be very fast these days. The political party your columnist normally supports – the Libertarian Party – first nominated a presidential candidate who supported gay marriage in 1972. It took the Democrats 40 years to catch up and the Republicans 44 years. The issue is not even controversial any more, though as little as 20 years ago the then President wanted a Constitutional amendment to prevent gay marriage, and the proposition was defeated in popular votes in liberal states such as Washington and California (twice).

While farming animals for meat will not have disappeared four decades from now, it will be serving a small, luxury, industry.

All this is good. Food will be more affordable – a path that we have been on for centuries. Animal welfare will be enhanced. The environment will benefit from lower carbon emissions, less water consumption, and less land use.

Agricultural jobs will change, of course. There’s no immediate prospect of milk, eggs, or wool from labs, so some farming of animals will continue. Unlike slaughter free-meat, milk from soya, oats, or almonds is different from animal milk. The taste is not the same, and some people will continue to prefer milk and cheese from cows, goats and sheep.

But farming will certainly move to more crops and fewer animals, and the trend will be well-established in less than a decade.  

Quentin Langley lives in New York and teaches at Fordham University. His book, Business and the Culture of Ethics was published in September 2020