Burger King has made the plant-based Impossible Whopper available at all its US locations, prompting me to visit a Burger King for the first time (and then, shortly after, the second time) in memory. White Castle and Red Robin are other establishments in which I have sampled Impossible-based burger-like creations. I am among those who wouldn't be able to tell, if I did not know, whether the Impossible versions are meat-based or not. Recently, I had a lunch at an old-school American-style diner that included a plant-based Beyond Burger on its menu, while also emphasizing (via a large sign) that its vegetable soup was vegetarian. Beyond Meat features an impressive array of professional athletes who serve as Beyond Ambassadors.
The revolution is underway. Plant-based pseudo-hamburgers will get tastier and tastier, and eventually, they will be cheaper (perhaps quite a bit cheaper) than meat burgers: feeding bushel after bushel of grain to livestock for many months to produce burgers will have a hard time competing with taking a tiny fraction of that grain and making the burger directly. (We are slowing the transition through policies that subsidize the production of grain.) There are some positive feedback mechanisms built-in, too. Start with a small vegan vanguard of environmentalists, animal welfare activists, and health-conscious consumers, use them to jumpstart an industry, induce quality to rise and prices to fall, and watch as the eating of traditional meat transforms into a practice that becomes socially suspect. No doubt there will still be traditionally-produced meat that is eaten, just as hunting has not disappeared, but it will become a niche behavior, and one that many parents will want to shield their children from.
And then there is the coming clean meat alternative...
The revolution is underway. Plant-based pseudo-hamburgers will get tastier and tastier, and eventually, they will be cheaper (perhaps quite a bit cheaper) than meat burgers: feeding bushel after bushel of grain to livestock for many months to produce burgers will have a hard time competing with taking a tiny fraction of that grain and making the burger directly. (We are slowing the transition through policies that subsidize the production of grain.) There are some positive feedback mechanisms built-in, too. Start with a small vegan vanguard of environmentalists, animal welfare activists, and health-conscious consumers, use them to jumpstart an industry, induce quality to rise and prices to fall, and watch as the eating of traditional meat transforms into a practice that becomes socially suspect. No doubt there will still be traditionally-produced meat that is eaten, just as hunting has not disappeared, but it will become a niche behavior, and one that many parents will want to shield their children from.
And then there is the coming clean meat alternative...
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