Alt-Meat’s Long Game

Believer Meats’ shutdown in late 2025 made for an easy narrative: If one of cultivated meat’s best-funded players can’t make it, the whole category must be over. Factor in the slowdown in plant-based meat sales, and it’s tempting to declare that alt-meat was a fad.

That conclusion confuses a financing cycle with an emerging technology cycle.

As a promising technology that emerged before the infrastructure needed to support it was fully in place, cultivated meat is a classic case of an idea that may be ahead of its time. Believer Meats’ story underscores that point. The company received a U.S. Food and Drug Administration “no questions” letter for cultured chicken in July 2025—more than two years after Believer applied for it, slowing the company’s ability to bring its product to market. At the same time, venture capital funding was drying up.

In 2019, consultancy Kearney published a forecast suggesting that alternative proteins could account for more than half of protein consumption by 2040. It may take until 2050 or later for the figures Kearney forecast to materialize, but that just serves as a reminder that food innovation is a long game.

Plant-based meat products are proof of that long game. They are not new. I worked to develop meat analogs five or six decades ago during my career at General Foods. Our customers—prisons and schools, primarily—achieved cost savings by blending them with conventional meat.

Today, pairing a plant-based meat option with higher-fat beef is one of my favorite approaches to making chili. So, I’m a believer in the market opportunity that hybrid products present, and I’d like to see more such offerings in the product development pipeline.

Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat moved plant-based meat a quantum leap forward, introducing products that are close to conventional meat in texture and flavor. Another meat alternative that should not be overlooked is mycoprotein, which is made from fermented fungus. It has a structure much more akin to conventional meat than other alt-meat products. In Western Europe, the mycoprotein brand Quorn is the market leader in the meat alternative category. And mushrooms, another fungus, are increasingly being blended with conventional meat in the United States.

A small market share is not the same as small market potential.

Today, plant-based meat sales represent just about 1% of total meat category sales, but a small market share is not the same as small market potential. To meet the protein needs of a rapidly growing global population, there’s really no alternative to reducing consumption of conventional meat. By 2050, the world’s population is expected to approach 9.8 billion. We simply cannot, on this Earth, sustain livestock production at the level needed to feed this growing world population. We’re running out of land, and we’re running out of water. Agriculture occupies about half of the world’s habitable land, and nearly 80% of that land is devoted to livestock, according to data compiled by Stanford University.

Converting plant calories and protein into meat—especially beef—remains intrinsically inefficient. Our World in Data estimates that beef production can require 25 kilograms of feed per kilogram of beef, and life cycle analyses repeatedly show beef among the highest-impact foods for greenhouse gas emissions and land use per unit of protein. What’s more, the amount of water required for beef production is 10 times greater than the amount needed to produce plant protein.

For the alt-meat category to grow, it must broaden its appeal in the way that plant-based milks have. Plant-based milk isn’t cheaper than dairy, yet it has reached a mid-teens’ share of milk dollar sales because consumers enjoy it. Alt-meat will grow fastest where it earns repeat purchase—not by emphasizing sustainability messages or positioning itself as a vegan substitute, but by delivering a satisfying eating experience.

The next decade will not be an all-or-nothing showdown. Expect a portfolio: conventional meat where it performs best, more mycoprotein and mushroom options, plant-based products that keep improving, hybrid products with broad appeal, and cultivated meat beginning small but eventually finding its niche.

The real question for food science and the investment community is whether we have the patience—and the product discipline—to build alternatives that consumers choose simply because they taste great.

The opinions expressed in Dialogue are those of the author.