for fast-food purposes, the plant-based meats (Impossible, Beyond Meat) were generally able to get in the door at parity with alternatives from what i can tell. i’m not sure about in-grocery-store, though. they’ve also been racked by waning consumer interest, probably because they seem “faddish” for lack of better wording. that, i honestly think, is the biggest hurdle to cultivated meat–not price.
I buy Beyond Meat bricks for $8.99 a pound. That’s pricey compared to regular beef, but I’m an outlier with pricing. I keep kosher at home and kosher meat is VERY expensive. Between the price and hassle (it requires separate pots/pans, plates, utensils, etc), I keep vegetarian at home. It’s just cheaper and easier.
Beyond Meat lets me cook “beef” dishes for less than kosher beef would cost me and with more flexibility. (Tonight, we had pasta and Beyond Beef meatballs with cheese - a dish I couldn’t make using kosher meat.)
There’s still a market for products like Beyond Beef, but I agree that they’ll need to hit “normal need” price levels before it really takes off.
That’s actually a big debate happening in the kosher community.
On one hand, you don’t need to do things like check every organ for signs of illness. As long as the vat doesn’t get infected with something, it’s good. You also don’t need to drain blood from the resulting meat since it doesn’t have any.
On the other hand, if you take a cell from a living animal, is the whole mass in the vat considered a living creature? If so, eating from it might not be allowed (eating flesh from a live animal is forbidden). The lack of any kind of slaughter process could either mean they want harvested meat is fine or none of it is.
There will likely be rabbis ruling both ways for awhile before any consensus emerges. If any ever does. (Judaism is very decentralized and consensus is often difficult to impossible.)
for fast-food purposes, the plant-based meats (Impossible, Beyond Meat) were generally able to get in the door at parity with alternatives from what i can tell. i’m not sure about in-grocery-store, though. they’ve also been racked by waning consumer interest, probably because they seem “faddish” for lack of better wording. that, i honestly think, is the biggest hurdle to cultivated meat–not price.
I buy Beyond Meat bricks for $8.99 a pound. That’s pricey compared to regular beef, but I’m an outlier with pricing. I keep kosher at home and kosher meat is VERY expensive. Between the price and hassle (it requires separate pots/pans, plates, utensils, etc), I keep vegetarian at home. It’s just cheaper and easier.
Beyond Meat lets me cook “beef” dishes for less than kosher beef would cost me and with more flexibility. (Tonight, we had pasta and Beyond Beef meatballs with cheese - a dish I couldn’t make using kosher meat.)
There’s still a market for products like Beyond Beef, but I agree that they’ll need to hit “normal need” price levels before it really takes off.
Oh interesting. Kosher is a whole market I didn’t even think of with Beyond Meat.
Is cultured meat considered “real meat” or “kosher” for your purposes? (I hope I’m using the term correctly)
That’s actually a big debate happening in the kosher community.
On one hand, you don’t need to do things like check every organ for signs of illness. As long as the vat doesn’t get infected with something, it’s good. You also don’t need to drain blood from the resulting meat since it doesn’t have any.
On the other hand, if you take a cell from a living animal, is the whole mass in the vat considered a living creature? If so, eating from it might not be allowed (eating flesh from a live animal is forbidden). The lack of any kind of slaughter process could either mean they want harvested meat is fine or none of it is.
There will likely be rabbis ruling both ways for awhile before any consensus emerges. If any ever does. (Judaism is very decentralized and consensus is often difficult to impossible.)