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This is year-old blogspam. bigthink.com spins every article out into nine self-linked articles, and also leaves out all the interesting details. Also they don't source the $11.36 figure, and all the other sources I've read give prices to about 1 significant figure, not to four, so I suspect that's made up.

If you're interested in this subject, read this WP piece from 18 months ago, or this BBC piece that was the actual source for TFA from 13 months ago, both of which contain more up-to-date facts than TFA.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/05/20/meet-...

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34540193

Or, for more background, here's the 3-year-old piece from Time that raised a lot of discussion, and which gives the context for the price drop.

http://science.time.com/2013/12/16/the-triple-whopper-enviro...

Or you could read this, from 6 months ago. Note that it looks like a bit of a biased piece to me, but it appears to be directly sourced, rather than just regurgitated. It also is specific about Mosa's price targets, saying that they think that $29.50/lb will be their launch price, and they speculate that $3.60/lb seems like an achievable goal for later (currency not specified, though probably they mean USD, but note that the company is not American).

http://www.takepart.com/feature/2016/05/23/cultured-beef




"Also they don't source the $11.36 figure"

And did I miss it, but are we to assume that's $11.36/lb? Some other unit?


Generally, random numbers like this come from unit conversion. My guess is that it started at $100/kg.

$100 per kg = $11.34 per 1/4 lb burger

You get $11.36 per 1/4 lb if you use 2.2 lb = 1 kg, instead of the exact conversion.


I assumed 1/4 lb burger, just because it's the common burger size that provides the most favorable comparison. It's a bullshit comparison though. A burger is more than just a patty, and upscale burgers (which they are targeting with prices like that) rarely are just a 1/4 lb of meat. I initially thought the $11.34 price was pretty good, because I eat $10 burgers all the time, but a 1/3 or 1/2 pound burger made with this meat would cost about $50 in a restaurant.

The best argument for this burger is that the moral cost of killing a cow is much higher than the added price of the artificial meat. I'd find that argument pretty convincing, but I don't make enough money to be that moral.


> a 1/3 or 1/2 pound burger made with this meat would cost about $50 in a restaurant.

More than that. A 1/2 burger would cost, using the 30% food cost rule of thumb for restaurant pricing, nearly $80 assuming that everything other than the patty had no food cost.


I didn't realize the rule of thumb was 30% for a restaurant. I've always worked in retail, where a 100% markup is always a good rule of thumb.


Restaurants aren't reselling packaged goods, they are also assembling from raw, so there is both amortized cost of production equipment and labor costs associated with production that retail lacks.


> The best argument for this burger is that the moral cost of killing a cow is much higher than the added price of the artificial meat. I'd find that argument pretty convincing, but I don't make enough money to be that moral.

There's also the effect of cattle on the environment. They are the largest producer of greenhouse gasses by far. I personally have no moral issue with killing animals, but the effects on the environment have made me switch to Chicken (which is better for the environment and leaner) but I would gladly switch to biocattle.


Wow. That's pretty good speculation! Respect!

All I know is I would have been marked off on any exam if I would have left something like that.


Yes, that's bad. We've changed the URL from http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/answering-how-a-sausage-gets-ma..., which points to the BBC piece.




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