Potential demand for synthetic meat

Abstract

The demand for meat products is rising globally. A potential substitute for meat is synthetic meat, meat produced in the laboratory. Synthetic meat is not in the market yet due to high production costs and regulatory issues, but it will probably be available during the next decade. If cheap and popular it may crowd out the demand and production of farmed meat and herby affect farmers income. In this study we have used data from a choice experiment in Norway to construct price and income elasticities for synthetic meat with three different assumptions. The data shows that half of the population does not accept synthetic meat. They will not buy it whatever the price. The own-price elasticities were estimated to be in the interval [-0.47,-0.08] and the cross-price elasticities were in the interval [0.09,0.40]. The income elasticities were all close to 0. If these elasticities were valid in a situation in which synthetic meat is available on the market, we could infer that the market for synthetic meat is limited.