Summary: Cocktail Party Economics

PEAR Assignment 1: The End of Meat

Economics can be defined as the social science that studies the choices that

individual, businesses, governments, and entire societies make as they cope with

scarcity. An article published by Business Financial Post talks about how, New York

restaurant owner, David Chang is serving a new meatless burger that contains zero

meat, yet tastes, looks, cooks and even bleeds like real meat. It is made from

wheat, coconuts, potatoes and one more special ingredient: Heme. “The heme is

natural and identical, down to the molecular level, to what is consumed from a

cow,” (Business Financial Post) Veggie burgers might become more common in the

future for health reasons, price and the demand for meat.

A research firm

called FarmEcon LLC, concluded that the demand of meat will
not be met by the year 2050.

The love of meat in the western world has also fallen

since 1999 in Canada by a 25%. (Business Financial Post) The consumption of

livestock by the year 2050 shows how scarcity and value go hand and hand, stated

in the book Cocktail Party Economics, “Scarcity reveals Value.” (pg. 21)

The problem is that raising cows is a very inefficient way to make food.

Feeding the cows and needing more energy and water to maintain the farms take

up a lot of resources, time and space. “it takes five to 20 kilograms of feed and

15,400 litres of water to produce a kilogram of beef.” (Business Financial Post) The

space that livestock take up around the world is outrageous, using 25% of the

world’s ice free land for livestock grazing and companies are still cutting down

forests to make fields for cattle which will only raise the methane gas emissions in

the atmosphere. Due to the dwindling forests for more grazing space for cattle, is

going to result in more resources being put into maintaining livestock and a

negative impact on the atmosphere. This can be explained in Cocktail Party

Economics when it states that, “scarcity is a fundamentally relative term rather

than an absolute one.”

(pg.9)
It is estimated that the livestock sector generates more than 1.4% of the
world’s gross domestic product and when the projects showing the decline in the
meat industry in the near future, it could mean a loss of jobs for many. The director
of the Food Institute at Guelph University, Evan Fraser, says that “the meat industry
is going to have to embrace the changes if it going to service through the
demographic, political and environmental forces.” (Business Financial Post)
Finally, lab-grown meat as well as dairy can help the meat sector with
problems that meat companies face.

such as Mad Cow disease which was a crisis is

Canada’s beef industry in the early 2000’s. “It makes a lot of sense to work with the

existing providers of protein instead of opposing them,” says chief executive of New

Harvest, Isha Datar. If lab-grown meat replaces meat entirely we can see a total

elimination of methane gas in the livestock industry, (Livestock being the lead

producer of methane gas is the world), as well as the huge amount of land used to

house livestock.

In conclusion, it is clear that the meat industry is facing a downfall in the

foreseen future and if they do not change and embrace the fact that other

companies such as David Chang’s veggie burger then they will be left behind. Small

companies such Memphis Meats, Mosa Meat and SuperMeat are racing to get their

“meat” out of the lab and into production as fast as possible. Seeing that tofu

only
accounted for 0.1% of the 260 million tonnes of meat sold in the year 2015, they
are saying that, “We do not intend to be niche,” (business Financial Post)