While the conventional meat industry is a giant economic force today, a new report from the global consultancy AT Kearney doesn’t paint a bright future for meat producers—although Mother Nature will surely be smiling at the predictions featured in this report.
At the moment, the conventional meat industry raises billions of animals each year and turns over $1 trillion annually. But according to the report, most of the meat people eat in 2040 will not come from slaughtered animals. Instead, the consultancy group predicts 60 percent will bee either grown in vats or replaced by plant-based products that look and taste like meat. This is due to a number of factors.
First, faux-meat companies such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are taking the market by storm, with fast food chains already incorporating these options into their menus.
Secondly, other companies are working on growing meat cells in culture, to produce real meat without needing to raise and kill animals. No such products have yet reached consumers, but AT Kearney predicts cultured meat will dominate in the long term because it reproduces the taste and feel of conventional meat more closely than plant-based alternatives.
Another factor is that people are becoming more aware of the environmental effects of the meat industry, shifting instead to flexitarian, vegetarian and vegan lifestyles. Whatever the factors may be, it’s encouraging to see that we’re starting to wean ourselves off meat.
