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The meat industry is also cost effective due to massive government subsidies, at least in the US. Would these subsidies be available to lab grown meat operation

The meat industry is also cost effective due to massive government subsidies, at least in the US. Would these subsidies be available to lab grown meat operations?

laingc 5y ago
The New Zealand meat and dairy industries do not receive subsidies after radical market deregulation during the Labour government of '84. We have a highly efficient and profitable sector, mainly for the reason that we compete in fairly extreme conditions against subsidised international players. Note that this process incurred significant pain for many individuals while the industry reoriented and consolidated, and I am not inviting any argument around environmental impacts (which I would contend are bad, but also clearly less bad than other countries). So yes, "natural" meat can be competitive and efficient without government subsidies.
- lcpriest 5y ago
  All that is true, but - we also don’t force farmers to internalize the externalities created by their industry. Southland farmers themselves are saying that if they had to comply with proposed water and soil quality regulations that they wouldn’t be able to exist due to the increased costs involved. The backlash even from the introduction of a heavy vehicles tax are representative of how much these farmers think they rely on the unpriced benefits they are getting.
  - kibibu 5y ago
    > if they had to comply with proposed water and soil quality regulations that they wouldn’t be able to exist due to the increased costs involved People always say things like this until they are forced to, and somehow find a way. (Particularly if imports were charged similar tariffs)
    - stkdump 5y ago
      > People always say things like this until they are forced to, and somehow find a way. That is one of two possible outcomes. The other is that the sector just dies off and relocates to another place on earth, where externalities don't have to be considered, maybe for strategic reason. This has happened many times.
      - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
        This is why the EU is looking into carbon-based tariffs. If you want to enact global change, you can't just change yourself, though it's always a good place to start. And probably a major beneficiary of similar laws currently is meat production and animal welfare laws used to exclude imports.
  - quattrofan 5y ago
    We also don't value the cost of the environment. If we did and we taxed appropriately I suspect beef farming would be unprofitable.
  - te_chris 5y ago
    It’s time to subsidise NZ farmers to at least encourage sustainable land use.
  - theodric 5y ago
    Farming is thankless, backbreaking, poorly-paid work that often is only viable because of subsidies the government provides, because the government recognizes that without farmers we'll all starve. And you're concerned that they're not paying their fair share. Fine. Good luck with that.
    - krageon 5y ago
      > we'll all starve Please, every time someone proposes farmers lead a less cushioned life we get these huge bitter fights from somewhere. They don't also have to exist here. If you have a vested interest and want your subsidies to continue, that's cool! But there's no need to peddle your salty response to it when literally everyone everywhere has already heard them said many, many times.
      - theodric 5y ago
        >less cushioned life Jesus Christ... Come spend a week on my farm and see how cushy it is.
        krageon 5y ago
        I grew up in the countryside. I'm sure your farm is very difficult to live on, but I'm not so sure it's a general thing. Edit: Besides that, a subsidy is a cushion. That's what I was talking about. That doesn't merit this response.
    - WastingMyTime89 5y ago
      > they're not paying their fair share That's not how it works. There is no fair share. He is saying that farmers are not actually paying the costs they make society incur. Therefore these costs are not priced into the meat they produce which would not be that competitive if that was the case. It's a form of subsidy.
    - adrianN 5y ago
      The cost of food as a share of income has fallen dramatically over the last fifty years or so. It's not unfathomable that it rises a bit again in exchange for properly pricing in externalities.
  - roenxi 5y ago
    > All that is true, but - we also don’t force farmers to internalize the externalities created by their industry. The net externality is probably positive, and if you want to start evening the slate using externalities then farmers would deserve a subsidy (which is bad policy). Food is about as high on a supply chain as it is possible to get, and the entire downstream supply chain would count as an externality of the farmer's activity. If farmers didn't produce food we'd all starve to death, but that is absolutely not priced in to how much they get paid.
  - laingc 5y ago
    As I said, I really don’t want to get drawn into the environmental debate, but there is one persistent myth that does need to be corrected: the idea that emissions from “heavy” vehicles are not priced. They are. They’re in the ETS. Reductions in heavy vehicle use due to tax will not reduce carbon emissions at all, as it will be emitted elsewhere in the economy. The only way to reduce the emissions of an activity covered by the ETS is to lower the cap, which can be done without a vehicle tax of any kind.
- wumpus 5y ago
  A bit of googling says that New Zealand cows eat a lot of grain in both the beef and dairy industries. Grain is subsidized in many countries.
- hannob 5y ago
  We'd probably have to define what "not receive subsidies" means. I'm pretty sure they don't pay for the damages caused by the methane and N2O emissions caused by the meat production. "We don't have to care about our externalities" is ultimately a form of subsidy.
- lenkite 5y ago
  And the results shine! New Zealand has the world's highest feed efficiency in poultry. https://www.feedstrategy.com/poultry/new-zealands-tegel-poultry-achieves-worlds-best-feed-conversion/ https://www.feedstrategy.com/poultry/new-zealands-tegel-poul...
tablespoon 5y ago
> The meat industry is also cost effective due to massive government subsidies, at least in the US. Would these subsidies be available to lab grown meat operations? Why would those subsidies matter when you're comparing a cow to a bioreactor? You can stick the cow in a dirty field and have hundreds of pounds of meat a few years later, as dirt-poor herdsmen with practically no captial have been doing for thousands of years. Its equivalent competitor would be a fussy bioreactor in a clean room that would require millions in capital, as well as high-end expertise and labor. Apparently the "food" is also ridiculously expensive.
macinjosh 5y ago
No it is not. Please provide evidence for this claim.
- zufallsheld 5y ago
  https://medium.com/@laletur/should-governments-subsidy-the-meat-and-dairy-industries-6ce59e68d26 https://medium.com/@laletur/should-governments-subsidy-the-m... > According to recent data from Metonomics, the American government spends $38 billion each year to subsidize the meat and dairy industries, but only 0.04 percent of that (i.e., $17 million) each year to subsidize fruits and vegetables.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > the American government spends $38 billion each year to subsidize the meat and dairy industries What does that work out to per pound of meat output?
    - saalweachter 5y ago
      US meat production is about 100 billion pounds / year, half meat and half poultry. So removing subsidies alone would raise costs by about $0.38/lb, but it may be as much as twice that if subsidies fall primarily on one subsector. The externalities -- both environmental and the poor labor conditions tolerated in the meat processing industry -- are probably a bigger "subsidy" than the budgetary ones.
  - abduhl 5y ago
    A google search for Metonomics returns only results with this exact same quote. What is the source for this, what is meant by subsidizing an industry versus “fruits and vegetables” (ie, Is subsidized grain part of the meat industry? Why would we compare an industry to two specific categories of food?), and what does recent mean?
edge17 5y ago
Not that I claim to know how to factor the cost in, but meat production has negative externalities that the industry doesn't pay for. Not to mention things like water rights etc. If the farmers actually paid those costs, my guess is the price gap would close a bit.
MrPatan 5y ago
Meat was a thing before government subsidies were a thing. Or before governments were a thing. Before most things were a thing, really.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  yeah, before capitalism was a thing, before the current human population of the earth was a thing, really.
- prox 5y ago
  The scale is vastly different, is it not?
- pharmakom 5y ago
  What has exchanged is 1) the massive scale of the human population and 2) wider access to animal protein. Without the subsidies, I expect prices would rise for consumers (most farmers are not making vast profits despite subsidies) and that is not a vote winner.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > What has exchanged is 1) the massive scale of the human population and 2) wider access to animal protein. Without the subsidies, I expect prices would rise for consumers (most farmers are not making vast profits) and that is not a vote winner. But the context here is lab grown meat. If you removed all subsidies from traditional meat production, I really doubt meat would become more than ten times more expensive. From the OP: > This approach is one factor that helps to cut down the volume of media needed, leading to what sound like impressive results: $18 to produce a pound of cultured chicken, according to a press representative. > That’s the lowest real-world figure I heard in the course of reporting this story. It could also easily translate into a price of more than $30 dollars per pound at retail—and may never go any lower. It's worth noting that those numbers are estimates and the facility that is supposed to produce them hasn't been built to validate them. Compare: https://www.target.com/p/boneless-38-skinless-chicken-breasts-value-pack-3-75-7-675-lbs-price-per-lb-good-38-gather-8482/-/A-54197515 https://www.target.com/p/boneless-38-skinless-chicken-breast... > Boneless & Skinless Chicken Breasts > $1.99/lb https://www.target.com/p/chicken-drumsticks-value-pack-4-28-5-83lbs-price-per-lb-good-38-gather-8482/-/A-54197511 https://www.target.com/p/chicken-drumsticks-value-pack-4-28-... > Chicken Drumsticks > $1.29/lb

The meat industry is also cost effective due to massive government subsidies, at least in the US. Would these subsidies be available to lab grown meat operations?

laingc 5y ago

The New Zealand meat and dairy industries do not receive subsidies after radical market deregulation during the Labour government of '84. We have a highly efficient and profitable sector, mainly for the reason that we compete in fairly extreme conditions against subsidised international players. Note that this process incurred significant pain for many individuals while the industry reoriented and consolidated, and I am not inviting any argument around environmental impacts (which I would contend are bad, but also clearly less bad than other countries). So yes, "natural" meat can be competitive and efficient without government subsidies.

lcpriest 5y ago
All that is true, but - we also don’t force farmers to internalize the externalities created by their industry. Southland farmers themselves are saying that if they had to comply with proposed water and soil quality regulations that they wouldn’t be able to exist due to the increased costs involved. The backlash even from the introduction of a heavy vehicles tax are representative of how much these farmers think they rely on the unpriced benefits they are getting.
- kibibu 5y ago
  > if they had to comply with proposed water and soil quality regulations that they wouldn’t be able to exist due to the increased costs involved People always say things like this until they are forced to, and somehow find a way. (Particularly if imports were charged similar tariffs)
  - stkdump 5y ago
    > People always say things like this until they are forced to, and somehow find a way. That is one of two possible outcomes. The other is that the sector just dies off and relocates to another place on earth, where externalities don't have to be considered, maybe for strategic reason. This has happened many times.
    - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
      This is why the EU is looking into carbon-based tariffs. If you want to enact global change, you can't just change yourself, though it's always a good place to start. And probably a major beneficiary of similar laws currently is meat production and animal welfare laws used to exclude imports.
- quattrofan 5y ago
  We also don't value the cost of the environment. If we did and we taxed appropriately I suspect beef farming would be unprofitable.
- te_chris 5y ago
  It’s time to subsidise NZ farmers to at least encourage sustainable land use.
- theodric 5y ago
  Farming is thankless, backbreaking, poorly-paid work that often is only viable because of subsidies the government provides, because the government recognizes that without farmers we'll all starve. And you're concerned that they're not paying their fair share. Fine. Good luck with that.
  - krageon 5y ago
    > we'll all starve Please, every time someone proposes farmers lead a less cushioned life we get these huge bitter fights from somewhere. They don't also have to exist here. If you have a vested interest and want your subsidies to continue, that's cool! But there's no need to peddle your salty response to it when literally everyone everywhere has already heard them said many, many times.
    - theodric 5y ago
      >less cushioned life Jesus Christ... Come spend a week on my farm and see how cushy it is.
      - krageon 5y ago
        I grew up in the countryside. I'm sure your farm is very difficult to live on, but I'm not so sure it's a general thing. Edit: Besides that, a subsidy is a cushion. That's what I was talking about. That doesn't merit this response.
  - WastingMyTime89 5y ago
    > they're not paying their fair share That's not how it works. There is no fair share. He is saying that farmers are not actually paying the costs they make society incur. Therefore these costs are not priced into the meat they produce which would not be that competitive if that was the case. It's a form of subsidy.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    The cost of food as a share of income has fallen dramatically over the last fifty years or so. It's not unfathomable that it rises a bit again in exchange for properly pricing in externalities.
- roenxi 5y ago
  > All that is true, but - we also don’t force farmers to internalize the externalities created by their industry. The net externality is probably positive, and if you want to start evening the slate using externalities then farmers would deserve a subsidy (which is bad policy). Food is about as high on a supply chain as it is possible to get, and the entire downstream supply chain would count as an externality of the farmer's activity. If farmers didn't produce food we'd all starve to death, but that is absolutely not priced in to how much they get paid.
- laingc 5y ago
  As I said, I really don’t want to get drawn into the environmental debate, but there is one persistent myth that does need to be corrected: the idea that emissions from “heavy” vehicles are not priced. They are. They’re in the ETS. Reductions in heavy vehicle use due to tax will not reduce carbon emissions at all, as it will be emitted elsewhere in the economy. The only way to reduce the emissions of an activity covered by the ETS is to lower the cap, which can be done without a vehicle tax of any kind.
wumpus 5y ago
A bit of googling says that New Zealand cows eat a lot of grain in both the beef and dairy industries. Grain is subsidized in many countries.
hannob 5y ago
We'd probably have to define what "not receive subsidies" means. I'm pretty sure they don't pay for the damages caused by the methane and N2O emissions caused by the meat production. "We don't have to care about our externalities" is ultimately a form of subsidy.
lenkite 5y ago
And the results shine! New Zealand has the world's highest feed efficiency in poultry. https://www.feedstrategy.com/poultry/new-zealands-tegel-poultry-achieves-worlds-best-feed-conversion/ https://www.feedstrategy.com/poultry/new-zealands-tegel-poul...

tablespoon 5y ago

> The meat industry is also cost effective due to massive government subsidies, at least in the US. Would these subsidies be available to lab grown meat operations? Why would those subsidies matter when you're comparing a cow to a bioreactor? You can stick the cow in a dirty field and have hundreds of pounds of meat a few years later, as dirt-poor herdsmen with practically no captial have been doing for thousands of years. Its equivalent competitor would be a fussy bioreactor in a clean room that would require millions in capital, as well as high-end expertise and labor. Apparently the "food" is also ridiculously expensive.

macinjosh 5y ago

No it is not. Please provide evidence for this claim.

zufallsheld 5y ago
https://medium.com/@laletur/should-governments-subsidy-the-meat-and-dairy-industries-6ce59e68d26 https://medium.com/@laletur/should-governments-subsidy-the-m... > According to recent data from Metonomics, the American government spends $38 billion each year to subsidize the meat and dairy industries, but only 0.04 percent of that (i.e., $17 million) each year to subsidize fruits and vegetables.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > the American government spends $38 billion each year to subsidize the meat and dairy industries What does that work out to per pound of meat output?
  - saalweachter 5y ago
    US meat production is about 100 billion pounds / year, half meat and half poultry. So removing subsidies alone would raise costs by about $0.38/lb, but it may be as much as twice that if subsidies fall primarily on one subsector. The externalities -- both environmental and the poor labor conditions tolerated in the meat processing industry -- are probably a bigger "subsidy" than the budgetary ones.
- abduhl 5y ago
  A google search for Metonomics returns only results with this exact same quote. What is the source for this, what is meant by subsidizing an industry versus “fruits and vegetables” (ie, Is subsidized grain part of the meat industry? Why would we compare an industry to two specific categories of food?), and what does recent mean?

edge17 5y ago

Not that I claim to know how to factor the cost in, but meat production has negative externalities that the industry doesn't pay for. Not to mention things like water rights etc. If the farmers actually paid those costs, my guess is the price gap would close a bit.

MrPatan 5y ago

Meat was a thing before government subsidies were a thing. Or before governments were a thing. Before most things were a thing, really.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago
yeah, before capitalism was a thing, before the current human population of the earth was a thing, really.
prox 5y ago
The scale is vastly different, is it not?
pharmakom 5y ago
What has exchanged is 1) the massive scale of the human population and 2) wider access to animal protein. Without the subsidies, I expect prices would rise for consumers (most farmers are not making vast profits despite subsidies) and that is not a vote winner.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > What has exchanged is 1) the massive scale of the human population and 2) wider access to animal protein. Without the subsidies, I expect prices would rise for consumers (most farmers are not making vast profits) and that is not a vote winner. But the context here is lab grown meat. If you removed all subsidies from traditional meat production, I really doubt meat would become more than ten times more expensive. From the OP: > This approach is one factor that helps to cut down the volume of media needed, leading to what sound like impressive results: $18 to produce a pound of cultured chicken, according to a press representative. > That’s the lowest real-world figure I heard in the course of reporting this story. It could also easily translate into a price of more than $30 dollars per pound at retail—and may never go any lower. It's worth noting that those numbers are estimates and the facility that is supposed to produce them hasn't been built to validate them. Compare: https://www.target.com/p/boneless-38-skinless-chicken-breasts-value-pack-3-75-7-675-lbs-price-per-lb-good-38-gather-8482/-/A-54197515 https://www.target.com/p/boneless-38-skinless-chicken-breast... > Boneless & Skinless Chicken Breasts > $1.99/lb https://www.target.com/p/chicken-drumsticks-value-pack-4-28-5-83lbs-price-per-lb-good-38-gather-8482/-/A-54197511 https://www.target.com/p/chicken-drumsticks-value-pack-4-28-... > Chicken Drumsticks > $1.29/lb