With the recent success of many meat businesses large and small, I’ve been noticing a few interesting comments from the peanut gallery.

Though praise is being amplified, so are the comments that dislike it.

In every recent Beyond Meat article (which there’s a new article every day about it), there are people who love it, and there are people who hate it.

For the people who hate it:

“Oh, it’s only meat if it comes from the animal”

Or

“Oh, it’s not really that healthy”

What’s worse, is that a lot of people think they can take a stand on how much they hate it by writing lengthy articles or videos just to ride the wave. The issue is that people know that the divisive nature of the subject allows them to gain a following.

One of the panic buttons people press is that they feel like the fledgling, innovative, new product will consume 99% of the current market share of something. Most likely, it will take decades before something just takes over the majority market share.

Let’s talk about innovation, and how it’s great to have more options.

Exceptions and Examples

The only big exception to this is digital, but digital is not food. Yes, Blockbuster and Kodak were wiped out by their digital competitors, but digitally made everything easier. It made shipping, recording, publishing, downloading, and everything so much easier on both the B2B end, and the B2C end but when it comes to physical assets, then things get complicated.

Take, for example, rideshare. Yes. It’s a huge market and Uber and Lyft took the taxi industry by storm. Uber and Lyft are great because the cars are clean and the people are nice.

However, I will take a taxi over a rideshare app if I am on the Las Vegas Strip or at a conference because the taxis are just right there, while the Uber and Lyft driver has to take 5-10 minutes to pick me up.

Books are another interesting situation. Books used to have declining value because of the Kindle and audiobooks taking the digital world by storm but people still enjoy touching the text and feeling the cover. In fact, just like food, book stores are growing because of the authentic feel of reading a physical book.

They just opened up a new Barnes and Nobles in my hometown. Why would they do that? Something is happening here.

Exceptions to the Exceptions

Food is different because when we innovate in food, we attack its culture, its values and its significance in history.

There are two examples that are interesting innovations that took an interesting turn when people started to notice it: GMO’s and IQF.

GMO’s haven’t had the best press, especially as people dug through the fact that Monsanto was patenting and punishing farmers for using their crops. Though GMO’s does amazing things to the farmer supply chain, it makes virtually no difference on the consumer end so when consumers see no benefit but hear about big food altering genes to increase yield, it communicates badly to the consumer.

Recent attempts (thanks to Sally Squires) have remedied the GMO debate a little bit by focusing on campaigns on how using GM crops helps ease the lives of farmer’s families.

IQF is interesting as everyone buys frozen foods and vegetables. The frozen food is fresh, convenient, and you can prepare meals or individual ingredients. Big food invests into it and when I tell you the process on how food is frozen, people just might find it interesting rather than be scared of it. Because the consumer’s life is improved using this technology, the consumer accepts it because they can’t live without it.

Yet to bring to my next point, there are still people who buy canned foods and there are obviously people buying Non-GMO products. Just look at your grocery store and realize that both the innovative category and the non-innovative category are doing really well.

Fractional Markets

I don’t believe that animal meat will be eliminated by around 2030, but I do believe that it will be reduced significantly as more and more innovations enter the market. With plant-based burgers on the rise and big players getting into it, this is becoming more and more true.

Animal meat works on an economy of scale. As more demand for meat pops up, the cheaper it gets. Plant-based meat also benefits from economy of scale, but plant-based and arguably clean meat, can change the formula in a week, animals will take centuries to change.

As alternative options to meat scale, animal prices will most likely go up. This will probably be a good thing, as it reduces the strain that factory farming is putting on the planet, but also (if the meat industry is smart) will put animal meat as a premium product.

Not only that, but the animal meat market will have to innovate-or-die.

Innovation isn’t just product formulation, it’s the ethics you preach and the systems you build. You might now have the option of buying cows or pig meat that benefits the environment because their manure improves the soil. Or maybe the cows and pigs are more humanely treated. You don’t need 100% of the meat market to see changes on the planet.

And once cell-based meat enters the market, then this is another fraction that will take up the pie.

These fractions will help society as having options to eat has always helped the world we live in, rather than hurt it. We shouldn’t have this all-or-nothing mindset when it comes to choosing where our flesh comes from, but appreciate the joy of the choices we can eat. If you don’t like it, you can buy another burger that has a different value you resonate with, across the street. This is the world we live in.

When you look back at how our food system has created the ability to choose, it’s quite amazing. We’ve learned how to not only keep milk from lasting longer but transport it all over the world. I just ate pretty good sushi in Ohio, I just discovered how I can drink sake, soju, and German beer all in one night.

Overall, there will always be comments from the peanut gallery about the divisiveness of an innovative product. You do have a choice to eat it today and choose to eat it again tomorrow. The companies that are innovating know to not worry about the noise and the smart ones embrace what makes them special.