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$20 billion comes up under $100 per person per year in the US. Even giving it a generous x4 multiplier to account for the people subsidizing the industry withou
by Sacho 10y ago
$20 billion comes up under $100 per person per year in the US. Even giving it a generous x4 multiplier to account for the people subsidizing the industry without being consumers, at $400 per year, given the $3 and $7 prices by parent, you would need to eat under 100 pounds of meat for meat replacements to be viable. The average American allegedly consumes close to 200 pounds of meat[0] per year, so it ends up still being quote economical.
[0] http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-availability-(per-capita)-data-system/.aspx#.VC1x2CtdVPQ http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-availability-(per...
- steveax 10y agoSure if you're willing to exclude the externalities. What's the societal cost of antibiotic resistant escherichia coli?
- paulmd 10y agoThe US is fixing that problem. Starting December 2016, a vet must examine and prescribe antibiotics for each animal; it will no longer be allowable to preemptively dose an entire herd just to enhance production. http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/DevelopmentApprovalProcess/ucm449019.htm http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/DevelopmentApprovalProce... Obviously it doesn't fix it for China though, which is where a lot of the drug-resistant bugs are coming from...
- eru 10y agoThat's encouraging. I hope that regulation will have teeth.
- cname 10y agoYou're making the incorrect assumption that vegetarians are replacing whatever meat they were eating with the more-expensive meat substitutes. As I noted in my comment above, there are plenty of meat substitutes and alternatives that are much cheaper than $7/lb.