4.3.3.4 Improving alternatives to animal products

Alternatives to animal products, such as plant-based, fermentation, or cultivated meat substitutes, can help accelerate dietary shift as they provide a (partial) substitution of meat and dairy in forms that are more familiar to consumers (Ritchie, Reay, and Higgins, 2018). In a report on UK and European meat and dairy alternatives, three key barriers to change were highlighted: high prices, unsatisfactory user experiences and limited availability.

Price parity is an important factor of the uptake of meat and dairy alternatives. Animal products and feed still receive substantially more subsidies in many countries (Vallone et al 2023; Good Food Institute, 2022). Despite differences in subsidies, large retailers, like Lidl, start to announce price parity between meat alternatives and animal products.  Vegconomist 2023

The UK leads in Europe for price parity and subsequently has the highest purchase and consumption rates of alternatives to meat and milk. Feedback mechanisms contributing to price parity (Figure 4.3.10), such as economies of scale and learning, are evident in the increase of sales and investment over the past 10 years. In the UK and EU, sales of meat substitute products increased from €625m- €1381m (2010-2019), and globally investment in plant-based companies has increased nonlinearly from $23m to $2.1bn (2010-2020). In the US, the meat substitute market has grown exponentially, growing by 54 per cent between 2018 and 2021, an increase in growth rates that was three times faster than that of animal-based products, and plant-based alternatives were expected to reach price-parity soon (Meldrum et al., 2023). Such market developments also create positive feedback in technological learning and investments, which further decrease prices, and signal to retailers, consumers and policymakers a dynamic change. This can create new norms and interest group coalitions. 

Targeted policy support, such as the Danish Fund for Plant-based Foods (Good Food Institute, 2021) and procurement standards for public cafeterias, can further accelerate shifts towards sustainable diets (Fesenfeld, 2023; The Food and Land Use Coalition, 2021) and create cross-sectorial spillovers (Meldrum et al., 2023). Promoting a combination of innovations along the supply-chain, such as agri-photovoltaics and alternative proteins, cannot only accelerate technology diffusion but also positively affect acceptance among potential transition losers such as . feed producers by offering them new income sources (Box 4.3.9). Transparency criteria of ecological and health impacts of alternative proteins can foster innovation in and the growth of healthy and sustainable products. Such innovation-oriented and green-industrial policies can lead to economies of scale by fostering technological learning, rapid reduction in costs of clean alternatives, and improvement in their performance (Fesenfeld, 2023; Barrett et al., 2020; Herrero et al., 2020). In turn, this can generate nonlinear political, economic and social feedback dynamics that can accelerate transition (Fesenfeld et al., 2023a; The Food and Land Use Coalition, 2021).

Deliberative and participatory governance approaches, such as the German Commission on the Future of Agriculture or the Swiss Citizens’ Assembly on Food Policy, can support the design and implementation of such policies to foster dietary shifts (Fesenfeld, Candle, and Gaupp, 2023). The large support of stakeholder groups and representative citizen samples can help to indicate that there is more room for political actions to alter diets than often assumed. For instance, the German Commission on the Future of Agriculture, composed of the central stakeholder groups in German food policymaking across the supply chain, supported policies to internalise the external costs of food products, alter food taxes, subsidies, and change public procurement rules to shift towards a planetary health diet. It also highlighted that dietary changes will affect businesses in livestock farming and that respective restructuring in the sector requires cost compensation and planning certainty that is enshrined in law. In the Swiss Citizens’ Assembly on Food Policy, a randomly selected, representative sample of 100 people discussed different options to transform the food system in line with the SDGs and produced recommendations for more sustainable food policy (SDSN, 2022). For example, they recommended adopting a carbon tax on climate-damaging food products and altering public procurement rules to foster sustainable diets.