Giving Compass' Take:

• Despite plant-based meat becoming a successful and environmentally-friendly meat alternative, the cost of the product remains a challenge. 

• How can investing in plant-based meat alternatives help make this product more accessible? 

• Learn why plant-based meat is the food of the future. 

The last couple of years have been consequential ones for meatless meat, as we at Future Perfect have documented. For all meatless meat’s success, however, advocates shouldn’t feel complacent. After all, meatless meat still makes up less than 1 percent of the annual meat consumption in the US — hardly a dent in how we eat.

Perhaps one of the biggest obstacles to mass meatless meat consumption becomes apparent when you get to the checkout line at your local grocery store.

One pound of factory-farmed beef burgers at the Walmart near me? $2.80/pound.

One pound of, say, Beyond Meat’s Beyond Beef burgers? $6.25/pound.

That price disparity may well be a big factor keeping meatless meat from breaking through in a big way.

That price disparity may well be a big factor keeping meatless meat from breaking through in a big way.

The pandemic has only underscored the importance of making meatless meat be a mainstream alternative to factory-farmed meat. Slaughterhouses, long notorious for their terrible working conditions, have been overwhelmed with coronavirus cases, in some cases because they responded to the coronavirus crisis by telling employees not to take any sick leave for any reason. With slaughterhouses shuttered, agriculture companies have engaged in mass cullings of animals they couldn’t sell, and the price of animal meat has gone up and remains higher than typical.

And then there are the larger-scale problems that the pandemic reminded the world of: It is a public health hazard to raise animals in crowded conditions that can incubate and rapidly spread disease.

Read the full article about plant-based meat farming by Kelsey Piper at Vox.