Meat alternatives have the potential to disrupt the multibillion-dollar global meat industry. The essential questions, however, are which of those new products have the most disruption potential, what are the resulting shifts within the value chain, and who will benefit most?
Based on our work in the global agriculture, food, and meat industry, we shed some light on the major disruptive trends and provide a trigger point to redirect the strategies of companies affected.
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Reliable data is difficult to obtain, but according to the American Oil Chemists’ Society (AOCS) and our own field research, it takes about 7 kg of grain in dry weight to produce 1 kg of live weight for bovine in feedlots, around 4 kg of grain in dry weight per 1 kg of live weight for pigs, and for poultry it is just over 2 kg in dry weight.
However, as this is live weight and not meat, all byproducts—which account for about 40 percent of live weight—must be subtracted.1 Hence, in the example of poultry, around 3 kg of grain are required to produce 1 kg of meat.2
Bearing in mind that meat has on average the same calories per kg as a mix of wheat, maize, rice, and soy beans, the conversion of the 46 percent of worldwide feed production into meat adds less than 7 percent to worldwide available food calories.3
This in turn implies that 44 percent of today's global agricultural production (37 percent plus 7 percent) would be enough to feed most humans.
It is worthwhile to note that a plant-based diet would not only provide the same calories but also have the same nutritional value if crops are chosen accordingly to have enough protein. Hence, we could feed around twice as many humans with today’s global harvest if we did not feed livestock but rather consumed the yield ourselves.
Based on the current worldwide population of 7.6 billion humans, we would have food for an additional 7 billion people. This number would increase even further if less of the harvest ended up in biofuel and industrial use or if waste could be reduced.
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At the current stage, it is hard to tell how fast the disruption will come about. However, one can already observe how wholesalers, retailers, and consumer goods companies are trying to find a lucrative starting position by purchasing exclusive distribution rights or through acquisition of start-ups (for example, Tesco bought distribution rights for the Beyond Meat Burger). Therefore, we have qualitatively forecasted the development of the meat market until 2040 based on reliable economic data as well as on our research and conversations with numerous experts in the field.
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Based on A.T. Kearney analysis, around one-third of the global meat supply will be provided by these new technologies within the next 10 years (see figure 9). It is noteworthy that the demand for conventional meat declines by 3 percent despite a global increase in meat consumption of 3 percent per year.
Novel vegan meat replacements will show a strong growth in the transition phase (until 2030), whereas cultured meat—with an annual growth rate of 41 percent per year—will outgrow novel vegan meat replacements between 2025 and 2040 due to technological advancements and consumer preferences.
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All in all, cultured meat and new meat replacement products are going to disrupt the $1,000 billion conventional meat industry with all its supplier companies. This disruption is supported by a general shift toward consumption of non-meat proteins (for example, legumes and nuts) as a consequence of new lifestyle trends, all aimed at a more sustainable and healthier diet, as well as regulatory measures against conventional meat.
Already today, we can observe the formation of a new customer segment made up of “passionate meat eaters” who take care of their diet but for whom a vegan or vegetarian diet is still not an option. In this context, the discussion about cultured meat as well as meat replacement products and how they can be produced in terms of large-scale batches at attractive prices may seem very technical and unemotional.
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