Evaluating the potential for plant-based meat to capture the U.S. meat market

This thesis describes factors influencing the meatless meat industry’s potential to expand, and it estimates the U.S. beef market’s response to competition from plant-based meat products. The first part of the analysis provides an overview of the meatless meat industry and outlines factors that influence the new industry’s potential to capture market from the U.S. livestock industry. These factors include consumer sensory acceptance of and willingness to pay for meatless meat products, technical feasibility of producing the products at scale, the economic feasibility of pricing them competitively with meat, and how the U.S. livestock market and U.S. agriculture lobbyists will respond to the new competition. Next, the analysis provides an empirical analysis of one of these factors – the U.S. livestock market’s response to competition from plant-based meat, using an examination of how competition between plant-based meat and ground beef would affect the entire beef market. The analysis estimates price changes for ground beef, fed steer, and choice and select beef markets using price elasticities and historic beef price data from 2013-2019. Joint-product theory and an OLS regression of historic beef prices indicate that these beef markets are linked, so plant-based meat’s competition with ground beef will affect supply and prices in the fed steer and choice/select markets. Beef price estimates are calculated for different scenarios in which plant-based meat captures 5% to 25% of the ground beef market. It is estimated that ground beef prices will drop 2.10% to 4.00% if plant-based meat takes 5% of its market, and its price elasticity of supply and demand would be -1.25 in the new market equilibrium.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Agricultural & Applied Econ

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Cornelius, Margaret M

Contributors dc:contributor

• Schnitkey, Gary D
• Ellison, Brenna
• Goldsmith, Peter

• meatless meat plant-based meat lab-grown meat consumer acceptability economic feasibility ground beef beef market

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2021 Margaret Cornelius

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/113191

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/113191