In terms of resources used in their production, a $6 burger expends more resources than a $3 burger.
For those worried about the ethics of eating animals, I can understand the extra $3.
For those just worried about other wastes (eg: losing 90% of the food value by feeding it to cattle), this isn’t a magic bullet, for now. Those extra $3 went into something else, whether it was a complicated energy-intense process, or luxury vacations for the patent owners of the process.
A $4 beef burger where $1 went toward reforestation or some other project may have the most impact over a $3 beef burger or $6 Impossible burger.
> In terms of resources used in their production, a $6 burger expends more resources than a $3 burger.
The meat/dairy industry in the US is subsidized to the tune of $38 billion, there's a little more to it than "Costs more at the store so it must cost more resources to make."
There's not a lot of hard data I can find on where the money goes, but the table on Wikipedia (2004) indicates that we mostly subsidize livestock feed grains, then cotton, wheat, and rice. Those four added up to 64%. Soybeans and products come in 5th at 7.6%. Fruits and vegetables, pretty much zero.
Health-wise, it makes all the wrong things cheaper.
What I want to see is what the pricing would be without the subsidies.
My guess is that the retail price impact would be tiny. Kinda like the calculations where Walmart could double associate salaries by raising prices by 6%.
Are we talking about a $5 steak becoming $5.09 or becoming $10?
Somebody is spending those dollars, they’re not burning them.
If you have an extra dollar, what do you do with it? You either spend it on land, labour or capital. Stuff, property, or other people that will spend it on one of the three above things.
I’d put that under labour and/or capital. And the equipment bought for the R&D requires building (ie: uses up resources), or the people involved spend that money on other stuff.
You really cannot strictly equate price with "resources" like this. Does a $10,000 designer shirt require 1,000 times the resources of a $10 t-shirt to produce?
I imagine they are charging a premium for the impossible burger because it's a novelty and they think they can get it. Time will tell if that pricing model is sustainable in the long run.
I said production costs or fancy vacations to the process owners.
Ie: cost + profit = price.
The $10000 shirt may pay for a lot of “designers” to tour the world about how great their shirt is, or for a celebrity to build a bigger house in exchange for an endorsement.
Or it could pay for $9990 in subsidizing reforestation, but doubtful.
A more profitable alternative to meat that's popular with the mass market would be a huge victory for conservation and animal rights.
Even if you hate those greedy rich people, their greed will mean their interests (more profit) will align with yours (fewer mistreated animals, less land devoted to meat-production).
Holding out for the capitalists to spontaneously get religion ("$9990 in subsidizing reforestation") seems like a losing bet here.
For those worried about the ethics of eating animals, I can understand the extra $3.
For those just worried about other wastes (eg: losing 90% of the food value by feeding it to cattle), this isn’t a magic bullet, for now. Those extra $3 went into something else, whether it was a complicated energy-intense process, or luxury vacations for the patent owners of the process.
A $4 beef burger where $1 went toward reforestation or some other project may have the most impact over a $3 beef burger or $6 Impossible burger.
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