Workshop discussion has surfaced scepticism about whether current PBA market evidence is informative enough to justify studying substitution patterns now. This note examines three related questions.
Evidence compiled: retail market-share by format, channel, and geography (§01–04) · consumer composition — who buys and for what purpose (§04.5) · blinded sensory taste-comparability (§06) · welfare-mapping by animal type (§07). This note does not estimate substitution elasticities; it examines whether the category is informative enough that such studies would be worth pursuing.
US retail share is 1.4% (Germany: 3.1%), most products lag on taste, and the sceptical position has real basis. But taste parity in some categories, buyer composition (mostly omnivores), and higher penetration in some channels and formats give the data more inferential traction than the headline shares suggest — the quick take below unpacks these three patterns.
The US is the only major market with published plant-based share data broken down by product format. Market share is 2–4× higher in reformed and comminuted formats than the 1.4% category average. (Reformed/comminuted products are made from ground, mixed, or extruded ingredients rather than whole-muscle cuts — e.g., breakfast links, nuggets, burger patties.) Patties reach 6–7% on a narrow denominator (pre-formed packaged patties only — excludes random-weight ground beef). A separate channel split shows the category reaching roughly 8% of packaged-meat dollars in the natural and specialty channel (stores like Whole Foods and similar independents, with 40%+ of sales from natural/organic/specialty products) versus 1.4% in mainstream multi-outlet³⁶. The whole-cut category is too small to register meaningfully in public summaries. Note: no equivalent format-level cross-tabulation is published for European markets — GFI Europe's country reports give format composition within PBM, but not PBM's share of conventional by format. Obtaining these within-format shares for European markets would require proprietary Circana data access or detailed reanalysis of full retailer panel data beyond what is publicly released.
Germany is a useful comparator, with a published 3.1% share of pre-packaged meat by volume in 2024⁸. This is not a claim that Germany is the highest-penetration market, only that it is one of the better-documented international cases in the current source set. The UK figure cannot be cleanly calculated from the most recent Circana dataset because animal-meat coverage is incomplete¹¹; an older NielsenIQ-based estimate put pan-European share at roughly 6% by value in 2022¹⁴. That Europe figure is not a clean comparator to Germany, because it uses an older dataset, different country coverage, and value instead of volume. The Netherlands and Spain track plant-based milk much more closely than meat: plant-based milk reaches nearly 10% of milk in Spain¹⁷, while plant-based meat sits in the low single digits.
Share of conventional could not be calculated for the UK from the latest Circana dataset due to incomplete animal-meat coverage¹¹. Netherlands and Spain similarly lack a published share-of-conventional figure for meat. The apparent gap between the 6% Europe (2022) and 3.1% Germany (2024) figures reflects four compounding differences: different years (2022 vs. 2024), different measurement bases (value-based NielsenIQ vs. volume-based Circana), different country sets (13 countries vs. Germany alone), and likely genuine variation across countries. Some northern European markets — notably the Netherlands (home of The Vegetarian Butcher) and the Nordic countries, where per-capita consumption of plant-based foods is high — probably sit above Germany (we speculate, as no published market-share figure is available for these markets), which would raise the 13-country average. However, no published within-format share breakdown is available for these markets, and the 6% figure should not be treated as a clean comparison to the Germany 3.1%.
Less consequential than the share-of-conventional question, but useful for context: where European plant-based meat sales actually concentrate. Sausage-style products dominate Germany⁹, reflecting both conventional German sausage culture and the strategic focus of Rügenwalder Mühle, a legacy sausage maker reportedly holding ~70% of the German plant-based meat market¹⁹. The UK mix is more diversified across mince-style ingredients, sausages, and breaded products. These are compositional shares of plant-based meat sales, not shares of conventional. Public summaries do not publish the within-format breakdown needed to say what plant-based sausage's share of conventional sausage is in Germany or the UK.
UK plant-based meat is also pork-leading by animal type (37% pork/ham, 28% beef, ~35% other including chicken¹²), which reflects the same sausage-format dominance.
Penetration in Europe is roughly three times the US level. Around a third of households in the UK and Germany bought plant-based meat at least once in 2024¹⁰, against 11% in the US in 2025⁶. The category reaches more people in Europe but with smaller, less frequent baskets per household, which explains why retail dollar sales between the two regions are closer than the penetration numbers would suggest.
Netherlands context (different methodology, not directly comparable): GFI Europe reports that 62% of Dutch households "occasionally purchased plant-based alternatives instead of meat or fish" in 2024³⁹. The Netherlands ranks 2nd in per-capita plant-based spend (€15.78) among the six European countries in the GFI Europe dataset, with at least 11 Dutch retailers committed to 60% plant-based protein by 2030. Plant-based protein's share of Dutch supermarket protein sales reached 41.6% in 2024 — a unique Dutch retail metric driven by legumes, nuts, and other whole plant foods, not PBM analogues alone.
Two related but distinct questions are worth separating. First: are PBM purchasers mostly prior vegetarians who would not have bought conventional meat anyway? Second: even where the purchaser is an omnivore, are they buying PBM for their own consumption — or for a veg*n spouse, child, or guest?
The first concern is not well-supported by available evidence: the large majority of PBM purchasers — measured by purchaser count in consumer surveys, not by volume or by regular-buyer frequency — are omnivores or flexitarians who also buy conventional meat. The second concern is harder to resolve. Household-level scanner data cannot identify who within the household consumes what, and the consumer surveys that establish omnivore dominance do not ask whether the purchase was for the respondent's own consumption. Neither question is fully settled by the 96% dual-buyer figure.
A further caveat on coverage: the 11% US household penetration figure means households that bought PBM at least once in 2025. Of those, 62% bought more than once — meaning repeat buyers represent roughly 7% of US households. The evidence below concerns all buyers; whether the conclusions hold for regular repeat buyers specifically is a further open question.
Behavioral (scanner) data reinforces the survey evidence: 87% of total US retail PBM dollar spend comes from meat-buying households ($970M of $1,118M, NielsenIQ Homescan 2023)⁴⁷. Additionally, 96% of US households that purchased plant-based meat in 2025 also purchased conventional meat²⁸, and only 2.79% of PBMA-buying households made no conventional ground-meat purchases at all (IRI panel 2018–2020)²⁹. In Germany, only 5% of consumers exclusively consume alternative proteins rather than both³⁵. Earlier Hartman Group surveys gave a directionally consistent but less precise omnivore range of 41–57%³⁴.
| Evidence toward self-consumption by omnivores | Evidence allowing for proxy-purchase for veg*n members |
| 46% of US lapsed buyers cite their own taste dissatisfaction²⁶ — if purchases were purely on behalf of veg*n family, the buyer's own taste experience wouldn't drive lapsing | Roughly 33% of US households have at least one member following a vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, or flexitarian diet³⁷ — mixed households are common enough that proxy-buying is structurally plausible |
| Beyond Meat reports ~70% of its consumers self-identify as flexitarians actively reducing their own meat consumption³⁸ — suggesting personal rather than proxy consumption for at least one major brand | Veg*n-only households spend roughly 3× more per household on PBM than dual-buying households, suggesting veg*ns are the more motivated buyers; dual-buyers' lower per-household spend could partly reflect infrequent proxy-purchases for one household member³⁴ |
| US buyer households average 6 plant-based purchase occasions per year²⁸ — roughly once every 8 weeks, which is consistent with personal dietary variety but also with occasional catering for a veg*n household member or frequent guest | Household-level scanner data (Neuhofer & Lusk 2022) cannot identify who within the household consumes each purchase — individual dietary recall matched to purchase panels would be needed to answer this directly²⁹ |
| GFI Europe's late-2024 consumer survey: 23% of UK adults and 25% of German adults reported personally consuming PBM in the last month; 14% of UK adults reported consuming PBM in the last week⁴¹. Lower bound (no cross-tab needed): only ~7% of UK adults are veg*n or pescatarian; even if all consumed PBM last week, they account for at most 7/14 = 50% of weekly PBM eaters — so at least half of UK weekly PBM consumers are omnivores or flexitarians by population arithmetic. Weekly consumption is also harder to attribute to proxy-purchasing than occasional monthly buying | The GFI Europe survey asks about personal consumption — more direct than household scanner data, and the weekly figure is harder to explain as proxy-buying for a veg*n household member. Residual caveats: (1) truthful self-reporting — respondents must correctly identify the food they ate as PBM rather than a traditional plant-based dish; (2) the dietary-profile cross-tab shown in the report (52% of omnivores "consuming at least one plant-based subcategory") uses the broad measure including falafel, lentils, plant milk — and cannot be cited as evidence about PBM consumption specifically; (3) question wording does not explicitly rule out someone eating PBM prepared by a household member |
| Bryant Research (UK, n=1,000, July 2023): occasional UK PBM consumers are approximately 67% omnivores, confirming meat-eaters as the clear majority among less-frequent buyers⁴⁸ | The same Bryant Research study finds that frequent UK PBM consumers split roughly evenly among omnivores, flexitarians, and non-meat-eaters (~one-third each)⁴⁸. So among the most committed weekly consumers, omnivores alone may not be a clear majority — though the ≥50% arithmetic lower bound from the 14%/7% figure remains valid |
A few additional data points that matter for interpreting the market-share evidence. These are not direct displacement estimates, but they help distinguish three separate questions: current scale, price sensitivity, and whether a PB purchase replaces an animal-product purchase.
PB burgers contributed roughly 25% of total burger growth across the EU Big 5 over this period.
| US plant-based beef price premium vs conventional beef, category average (2025)²¹ | +8% (avg) |
| US premium PBM brands (Impossible Ground, Beyond Beef) vs conventional 80/20 ground beef · SKU-level retail estimate (2024–25)²¹ | est. +25–60% |
| German PB meat price premium vs conventional meat (2024)⁸ | +45% |
| Hypothetical US burger experiment: PBMA choice when PB burgers are half the meat-burger price vs price parity³⁰ | 21.3% → 37.8% |
| US PB meat buyer households that also bought conventional meat in 2025²⁸ | 96% |
| Plant-based milk share of US milk dollar sales (2025) — for comparison¹ | 13% |
| Plant-based milk share of Spain milk volume (2024)¹⁷ | ~10% |
| Global PB meat & seafood retail sales, 2025 (Euromonitor)¹⁵ | $6.6B |
| US plant-based meat share of packaged-meat dollars · natural/specialty channel vs. mainstream³⁶ | ~8% vs 1.4% |
| Global PBM as % of conventional meat+seafood · by weight/volume (rough estimate)¹⁵³¹³² | ~0.1–0.15% |
| Global PBM as % of conventional meat+seafood · by retail value (illustrative, very rough)¹⁵ | ~0.16–0.25% |
| Rough conventional meat + aquatic-animal food flow, before a retail price conversion³¹³² | ~530M t |
The US +8% plant-based beef premium is a category average pulled down by value brands (Gardein, store brands); the branded estimate (Impossible/Beyond) is considerably higher at ~25–60% over like-for-like 80/20. The 2025 gap narrowed partly because conventional beef prices hit record highs (cattle shortage), not only because of PBM price cuts — the overall PBM category still carries a ~76% premium over conventional.
No public source gives a matched global conventional retail denominator. The rows above are rough calibrations: conventional side ≈ 530 Mt (365 Mt meat + ~165 Mt aquatic animals); at illustrative retail prices of $3–8/kg that is $1.6–4.2T. The volume-share row uses an implied PBM price of ~$10–12/kg to convert $6.6B to a weight estimate. These are order-of-magnitude calibrations, not matched market-share estimates.
The dominant public source is NECTAR (Nonprofit Consortium for Education, Tasting, And Research), which has now run two large blinded sensory studies. The 2025 study²⁴ is the headline: 2,684 omnivore and flexitarian consumers in New York and San Francisco, 122 plant-based products across 14 categories, blind-tasted at restaurants. The 2024 inaugural study²⁵ was smaller (1,150 consumers, 45 products, 5 categories) but used the same methodology. The headline gap is wide and consistent, but not absolute: some specific products do perform well, and one academic blinded burger study found a high-end plant-based burger outperforming 100% beef in the blind condition²⁷.
The gap between average conventional and average PB is 38 percentage points. The gap between conventional and the best PB products is 22 percentage points. Even the best plant-based meat is rated favorably by under half of consumers.
| Products tested (NECTAR 2025)²⁴ | 122 across 14 categories |
| Products reaching parity²⁴ | 20 of 122 (16%) |
| Best single product (Impossible Unbreaded Chicken Fillet) · probability of preference over conventional²⁴ | 31% |
| Texture gap: PB "juiciness" relative to conventional²⁴ | −62% |
| Hardest categories named by NECTAR²⁴ | Bacon, bratwurst, whole-cut steak |
| Most favorable public category result²⁵ | Nuggets reached parity in 2024 |
| US PB meat lapsed-buyer rate citing taste dissatisfaction²⁶ | 46% |
| Categories with parity winners (textures easier to mimic)²⁴ | Burgers, nuggets, sausage patties, hot dogs, meatballs |
| Categories with no parity winners (complex textures)²⁴ | Bacon, bratwurst, whole-cut steak, pulled pork |
The workshop question is not just "how large is plant-based meat today?" It is primarily whether lowering the price of plant-based alternatives would reduce animal-product consumption enough to matter for welfare — quality improvements and availability expansions are related levers; price is the focus here because existing data and natural price variation make it a relatively tractable entry point for economic analysis, and because asking one well-defined question at a time is necessary given scope constraints. Market share is a necessary input to understanding whether that channel plausibly operates at meaningful scale, but it is not the welfare quantity.
A useful decomposition: animal-welfare impact depends on (a) how much extra PB consumption an intervention induces, (b) what fraction of that displaces animal products rather than replacing vegetarian food or simply adding to total calories consumed, (c) how much the production of each animal product adjusts in response in market equilibrium* — and (d) which animal types bear that displacement and in what proportions, weighted by welfare burden. Term (d) requires separate estimates for each species — chicken, shrimp, fish, beef, pork, eggs† — since it is a sum across animal types, not a single multiplier.
| Market share | Bounds current scale and shows which formats have traction. It does not tell us whether the next PB unit replaces meat, replaces other vegetarian food, or simply increases total food consumption with no displacement. |
| Price evidence | Public retail data shows large price gaps across PBM animal types. A hypothetical restaurant experiment provides evidence suggesting large price cuts can shift meal choices toward PBM³⁰. Multiple real-world scanner studies also exist, but cross-price elasticity estimates are inconsistent — signs and magnitudes differ across studies, meat types, and countries (see study summary in §08). One field experiment suggests observational scanner elasticities may be unreliable. |
| Dual buyers | The fact that 96% of US PB meat buyer households also buy conventional meat is not, by itself, evidence of low displacement²⁸. It means the category has reached omnivore households where displacement is possible. The unresolved question is what those households would have purchased — over the relevant period, not necessarily on the same shopping trip — had the PBM option not been available: conventional meat, another plant-based food, something else entirely, or simply more food overall with no displacement of any animal product. Note that intertemporal compensation can cut both ways: a household that buys PBM on one occasion might compensate by eating more conventional meat on a subsequent trip or at a restaurant, which would reduce or eliminate net displacement; or it might gradually shift towards less meat overall. |
| Panel evidence | A Scientific Reports household-panel study found most PBMA buyers also bought ground meat, and ground-meat purchases did not fall after first PBMA purchase²⁹. This is relevant evidence against assuming one-for-one displacement in current conditions, but it is observational (not clearly causal), specific to a particular context (US household purchases, mostly ground beef products, pre-2022), and operates at the household level — it cannot separate whether the omnivore or a veg*n household member is the PBM consumer. It is not an argument against studying displacement through randomised experiments or quasi-experimental designs. |
| Animal-welfare mapping | A kilogram of displaced beef, chicken, egg, finfish, or shrimp has very different animal-welfare implications depending on how many animals are involved and what welfare weights are applied. By sheer animal count: global shrimp farming produces roughly 370 billion individuals per year from ~6 Mt; wild and farmed fish together involve hundreds of billions of individuals; broiler chickens account for roughly 80 billion land-animal deaths per year globally (from ~130 Mt of production), far exceeding cattle (~300M slaughtered, ~70 Mt). On a per-kilogram basis, chickens involve roughly 2–3 individuals, shrimp involve roughly 100–2,300 individuals depending on species.⁴⁰ Beef, which has the lowest animal count per kilogram and receives much of the PBM category attention (Beyond, Impossible), may be less welfare-relevant per unit displaced than chicken, shrimp, or finfish if welfare weights are even slightly positive for those species. This matters: nuggets and sausage patties — the highest-penetration formats — map onto chicken, which is a high-animal-count category. |
Euromonitor's global PB meat and seafood retail estimate is $6.6B in 2025¹⁵. There is no matched public conventional retail denominator in this source bundle, but production volumes give an order-of-magnitude comparison.
OECD/FAO estimates global meat production at 365 Mt in 2024³¹. FAO reports 185.4 Mt of aquatic animals in 2022, with 89% used for direct human consumption, or roughly 165 Mt³². Together that is about 530 Mt before aligning weights, processing losses, and retail prices.
At illustrative retail-equivalent prices of $3, $5, and $8/kg, that conventional scale would be roughly $1.6T, $2.7T, and $4.2T. The $6.6B PB category would then be about 0.4%, 0.25%, or 0.16% of the broad conventional scale. These numbers are deliberately rough: they are for calibration, not a publishable market-share estimate.
Is current adoption evidence informative for funding decisions about reducing PBA price, improving quality/nutrition, and expanding availability, or are current products too small and too imperfect to tell us much?
Two sceptical claims frame part of the workshop discussion. First claim (scale and quality): "PBM's market share is so low and product quality so poor that current market evidence tells us little about future substitution patterns — and little research effort is warranted." Second claim (consumer type): "The people currently buying PBM are mostly prior vegetarians, so the category cannot be expected to displace animal-product consumption at scale even if the market grew." The evidence above bears on both. The second claim is not well-supported by available data: §04.5 shows that 72% of US past-year PBM eaters are active meat-eaters (GFI Consumer Snapshot, n=3,079, Dec 2024)⁴⁷, with 87% of retail PBM dollars coming from meat-buying households (NielsenIQ 2023); and GFI Europe's UK survey provides a structural lower bound that at least 50% of weekly UK PBM consumers are non-veg*n by population arithmetic alone (14% weekly consumers vs. ~7% veg*n/pescatarian population⁴¹) — though the harder question of whether omnivore buyers eat the PBM themselves rather than for a veg*n household member is less settled by this data, and Bryant Research (UK, 2023) finds the omnivore share is lower among frequent buyers specifically (~1/3)⁴⁸. The first claim has more force — low share, quality gaps, and declining US penetration are real. But none of these rule out the category being informative about price sensitivity, format-level variation, or the conditions under which higher adoption could occur. And they do not argue against studying substitution rates directly through scanner panels or experiments.
This section maps what the present evidence can and cannot support. It is not a replacement for an elasticity model or welfare model.
| Study | Data / method | Finding on PBM–meat cross-effects |
| Meier, Freitas-Groff & Woolley (2024)⁴² | Nielsen US scanner; Hausman IV; event studies | PBA accounts for little of meat sales decline; all four identification approaches give inconsistent or contested results; authors flag limits on causal identification |
| Tonsor & Bina (2023)⁴³ | Nielsen US scanner; G-AIDS | PBM is a complement for chicken demand; substitute for beef and pork |
| Zhao, Wang, Hu & Zheng (2022)⁴⁴ | Nielsen US scanner; AIDS | PBM substitutes for chicken, turkey, fish; complements beef and pork — opposite chicken result from Tonsor & Bina |
| Neuhofer & Lusk (2022)²⁹ | IRI US household panel | No reduction in conventional beef purchases after first PBMA purchase; ground-meat spending rose on average |
| Liu & Ansink (2024)⁴⁵ | Dutch supermarket scanner; QAIDS | PBM price changes have no effect on meat demand; PBMs complement beef/poultry/fish but substitute for pork |
| Caputo, Lusk & Blaustein-Rejto (2025)⁴⁶ | Hypothetical basket DCE; food away from home | Tiny cross-price effects on meat from PB burger price changes; mix of complementarity and substitution by meat type |
| Jahn, Guhl & Erhard (2024)³⁰ | Hypothetical restaurant experiment | Halving PBMA price shifts PBMA choice from 21% to 38%, meat from 74% to 57% — largest price response in the literature, but hypothetical within-meal choice, not field displacement |
Cross-price sign (substitute vs. complement) is inconsistent across scanner studies, depending on meat type, country, dataset, and specification. Rethink Priorities' review of this literature finds results "varied" and "noisy" (src-33). A field experiment by Bray et al. (preliminary results cited in the EA Forum Pivotal Questions post) reportedly finds a large gap between observational scanner elasticities and RCT-based estimates — suggesting standard econometric approaches may be unreliable guides to the true field response. The hypothetical experiments identify price sensitivity in choice tasks but cannot capture real basket-level displacement. No study in this literature uses a clean exogenous price shifter in a real-purchase environment.
Each footnote in the dashboard links to a numbered row here. The full quote (or specific evidence) is shown in italics. URLs are direct links to the cited page or PDF where available.
| № | Source | Quoted evidence and link |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | GFI · "Analyzing plant-based meat & seafood sales" Free |
"In 2025, plant-based meat and seafood's dollar share was 1.4 percent of total retail packaged meat dollar sales, or approximately 0.7 percent of the total meat category, including random-weight meat. For reference, plant-based milk has grown to represent 13 percent of total milk dollar sales." Data from SPINS (powered by Circana) for 52 weeks ending Nov 30 2025. https://gfi.org/resource/analyzing-plant-based-meat-and-seafood-sales/ |
| 2 | GFI · format-level shares (2024 estimate) Free |
"Based on 2024 data, we estimated that plant-based patties held a six to seven percent share of total retail packaged meat patty dollar sales, compared to the less than two percent share plant-based meat and seafood held of overall retail packaged meat dollar sales." https://gfi.org/resource/analyzing-plant-based-meat-and-seafood-sales/ (Product format section) |
| 3 | GFI · breakfast format share Free |
"Plant-based breakfast links and patties held a roughly three to four percent dollar share" of their respective packaged-meat subcategory (2024 estimate, SPINS). https://gfi.org/resource/analyzing-plant-based-meat-and-seafood-sales/ |
| 4 | GFI · nuggets/tenders/wings format share Free |
"Plant-based nuggets, tenders, and wings held a roughly two to three percent share of their respective packaged meat subcategories" (2024 estimate, SPINS). https://gfi.org/resource/analyzing-plant-based-meat-and-seafood-sales/ |
| 5 | GFI · animal-type shares Free |
"Based on 2024 data, we estimated that plant-based chicken, beef, and pork products each held a roughly two to three percent dollar share of their respective retail packaged meat categories." https://gfi.org/resource/analyzing-plant-based-meat-and-seafood-sales/ |
| 6 | GFI/SPINS · US household penetration Free |
"In 2025, 11 percent of U.S. households purchased plant-based meat and seafood, with 62 percent of them purchasing more than once. … This is down from a high of roughly 20% in 2021." https://gfi.org/resource/analyzing-plant-based-meat-and-seafood-sales/ |
| 7 | GFI/SPINS · US retail market size Free |
"The U.S. plant-based meat and seafood retail market was estimated at $1.0 billion in 2025, up significantly from $682 million in 2017." https://gfi.org/resource/analyzing-plant-based-meat-and-seafood-sales/ |
| 8 | GFI Europe · Germany 2022-2024 (Circana) Free |
From the Market Share section, p.19: "As a percentage of the total sales volume of plant- and animal-based pre-packaged meat products, plant-based meat had a market share of 3.0% in 2022, rising slightly to 3.1% in 2024." Also p.20: "By 2024, plant-based meat was 45% more expensive than animal-based meat." Germany 2022-2024 PDF (GFI Europe, June 2025) |
| 9 | GFI Europe · Germany format mix Free |
Product format breakdown, p.18: "Sausage/salami led the market with 34.7% of sales volume in 2024, meatballs at 13.8% and schnitzel/medallions at 13.6%. The emerging steak/fillet category grew from 2.5% in 2022 to 4.2% in 2024." Germany 2022-2024 PDF (p.18) |
| 10 | GFI Europe / NielsenIQ · household penetration Free |
Germany p.14: "32.2% of households bought plant-based meat at least once in 2024" (down from 32.7% in 2023). UK PDF summary: "32% of households bought plant-based meat… at least once in 2024." Source: NIQ Homescan Consumer Panel (20,000 households Germany, 30,000 UK). https://gfieurope.org/european-plant-based-sales-data/ |
| 11 | GFI Europe · UK 2022 to Jan 2025 Free |
The UK PDF explicitly notes that "the Circana dataset did not include complete data on animal-based meat and seafood, and it was therefore not possible to calculate market shares for plant-based meat and seafood." Format mix (volume): ingredients 23%, sausages 22%, breaded/coated 13%, burgers 11%, other 31%. UK 2022-2024 PDF (GFI Europe) |
| 12 | GFI Europe · UK animal-type mix Free |
Animal-type breakdown of plant-based meat in the UK (volume, year to Jan 2025): plant-based pork/ham 37%, plant-based beef 28%, other (incl. chicken and lamb) ~35%. Pork-leading mix reflects sausage-format dominance. UK 2022-2024 PDF (GFI Europe) |
| 13 | GFI Europe · UK overall PB meat market Free |
UK plant-based meat retail value: £333M in 2024; sales volume 35.4 million kg; both down ~10-12% YoY. Frozen 57% of volume. UK 2022-2024 PDF (GFI Europe) |
| 14 | GFI Europe / NielsenIQ · 2020-2022 EU Free |
Pan-European plant-based meat share of pre-packaged meat reported at ~6% by value in 2022 across 13 countries (older NielsenIQ-based methodology, not directly comparable to current Circana figures). 2020-2022 Europe retail market insights (PDF) |
| 15 | Euromonitor International · global retail Paid |
"Euromonitor estimates that global plant-based meat and seafood retail sales (excluding tofu and tempeh) were $6.6 billion in 2025." The US accounted for 28% of global PB meat retail dollar sales in 2025; Europe was the largest region at ~$3.6B (Euromonitor, 2025). GFI page citing Euromonitor estimates |
| 16 | Circana · EU foodservice (CREST) Paid |
EU Big 5 out-of-home plant-based meat servings up 48% vs 2019. "Plant-based burgers grew significantly by +90% during year ending August 2023 vs 2019, and +20% year-on-year… representing a quarter (25%) of the total contribution made to growth in burgers." Direct Circana press release (not GFI). Circana press release (Nov 2023) |
| 17 | GFI Europe · Spain Free |
"Almost 10% of all milk sold in Spain in 2024 was plant-based." Household penetration: 46% PB milk, 22% PB meat at least once in 2024 (NIQ Homescan, 8,000-household panel). Spain 2022-2024 PDF (GFI Europe) |
| 18 | Destatis · Germany production data Gov't |
German Federal Statistical Office direct production statistics: 124,900 tonnes of meat substitutes produced in Germany in 2025, down 1.2% from 126,500 t in 2024. Production value €632.6M (2025). Production-side data, not retail. Just-Food coverage of the Destatis release · primary source: Destatis Genesis-Online |
| 19 | ProVeg / industry coverage · Rügenwalder Mühle Free |
Rügenwalder Mühle, originally a sausage and cold-cuts producer, is widely reported in industry press to hold around 70% of the German plant-based meat market. Corporate self-report; not independently verified by scanner data, but consistent with the format mix and consolidation seen in the German PB meat market. ProVeg corporate article (illustrative; figure circulates in multiple industry sources) |
| 20 | NECTAR · sensory research Free |
NECTAR (Nonprofit Consortium for Education, Tasting, And Research, hosted by Mercy For Animals) blinded sensory study with 1,100+ US consumers. Of five plant-based formats tested (burgers, hot dogs, bacon, nuggets, tenders), only plant-based nuggets reached parity with their animal-based counterparts. Independent of GFI. NECTAR sensory research page |
| 21 | GFI/SPINS · US price gap Free |
"Most plant-based meat and seafood animal types are still priced 1 to 3 times higher than their conventional equivalents. Plant-based beef is a notable exception, priced just eight percent higher than conventional beef in 2025 (although this includes typically higher-priced conventional beef cuts like steaks that are underrepresented in plant-based beef)." GFI Analyzing PB meat & seafood sales |
| 22 | Choices Magazine (AAEA) · PBMA Circana analysis Free |
Peer-reviewed analysis of Circana retail data 2019-2022: "PB beef alternatives are primarily available as ground products (70% of PB beef alternative revenue), patties (15%), or burgers (15%)… PB chicken alternatives, on the other hand, are exclusively frozen and include various product types, such as nuggets and tenders." Independent academic source (Agricultural & Applied Economics Association). Choices Magazine article |
| 23 | 210 Analytics · US assortment data Free |
210 Analytics processes Circana data for the US grocery industry. April 2025: refrigerated alt meat carried at 9.7 SKUs per store on average, down 10.3% YoY and down 31% from early 2021. Some items shifted to frozen set; reflects retailer assortment compression. AgFunder News (May 2025) |
| 24 | NECTAR · Taste of the Industry 2025 Free |
Largest publicly available sensory analysis of plant-based meats. 2,684 omnivore and flexitarian consumers in NY and SF, 122 PB products across 14 categories, blind tasting at restaurants. Key findings: average PB rated favorably by 30% of consumers vs 68% for conventional; 20 of 122 products (16%) reached parity (≥50% rating as good or better); best single product (Impossible Unbreaded Chicken Fillet) reached 31% probability of preference over conventional. Texture identified as biggest opportunity, especially in bacon, bratwurst, whole-cut steak. PB products were 62% less juicy than animal counterparts. NECTAR Taste of the Industry 2025 (full data dashboard) |
| 25 | NECTAR · Taste of the Industry 2024 Free |
Inaugural NECTAR study, 1,150 US omnivores, 45 plant-based products, 5 categories (burgers, hot dogs, bacon, nuggets, chicken tenders). Key finding: "of five plant-based product types tested, only plant-based nuggets performed comparably to their animal-based counterparts." Established that reformed/comminuted formats are closest to sensory parity. The 2025 expansion added 77 more products and 9 more categories. NECTAR sensory research page |
| 26 | NECTAR / Food Ingredients First · lapsed buyer evidence Free |
Caroline Cotto (director of NECTAR), via Food Ingredients First: "Consumer adoption is weakening, with 46% of US buyers not making repeat purchases claiming 'taste dissatisfaction'." Identifies taste as the primary reason for the US plant-based meat lapsed-buyer effect, consistent with GFI's separate consumer-survey data. NECTAR news (Cotto interview, 2025) |
| 27 | Caputo et al. 2023 · academic blinded sensory study Free |
Sensory experiment combined with discrete choice experiment on burger patty selection. n=175 untrained participants, random assignment to blind or informed tasting conditions. Compared four products: pea protein burger, "animal-like protein" burger, hybrid (70% beef + 30% mushroom), and 100% beef. Result: in the blind condition the "animal-like protein" plant-based burger was ranked most preferred, followed by 100% beef. Confirms that specific high-quality PB products can match or beat conventional in blinded trials. Caputo et al., Food Research International (2023) |
| 28 | GFI/SPINS · dual-buyer purchase dynamics Free |
Consumer panel section: among US households that purchased plant-based meat in 2025, 96% also purchased conventional meat. Those households averaged about 6 PB purchase occasions and 11.7 PB units, versus 33 conventional-meat occasions and 80 conventional-meat units. GFI frames this as an opportunity to grow PB share of meat purchases, not as a displacement estimate. GFI Analyzing PB meat & seafood sales, Consumer purchase dynamics |
| 29 | Neuhofer & Lusk 2022 · Scientific Reports Free |
Peer-reviewed household scanner panel analysis using IRI data: 38,966 total US households, 7,761 PBMA-buying households, November 2018 – November 2020. Key consumer-composition finding: 85.97% of PBMA-buying households also purchased conventional ground meat during the same period; only 2.79% of PBMA-buying households exclusively purchased plant-based without any ground-meat purchases. The 86%/2.79% split is behavioral (scanner-based), not self-reported dietary identity — making it methodologically stronger than survey-based dietary-profile figures. The 2.79% exclusive figure provides an upper bound on the share of PBMA buyers who could plausibly be strict non-meat-eaters in the household. Separately, average weekly ground-meat units/expenditure increased after the first PBMA purchase (from 0.16 to 0.18 units/week), contrary to a simple substitution hypothesis — though the observational design cannot establish causality. Note: the study period (2018–2020) predates the market's 2021 peak and subsequent contraction; the 86% cross-purchase figure is corroborated by GFI/SPINS 2025 data (96% of PBM-buying households also buy conventional meat). Nature Scientific Reports: Most PBMA buyers also buy meat PMC full text |
| 30 | Jahn, Guhl & Erhard 2024 · PNAS / PMC Free |
Two representative US online studies (n=2,126) on burger alternatives. In price simulations, when PBMAs moved from price parity with a $10 meat burger to half-price ($5), PBMA choice rose from 21.3% to 37.8%, while meat choice fell from 73.9% to 57.0%. Hypothetical restaurant-choice evidence; useful for price sensitivity, not a field displacement estimate. PMC full text: Substitution patterns and price response for PBMAs |
| 31 | OECD/FAO Agricultural Outlook 2025-2034 · meat Gov't |
OECD/FAO estimate for conventional meat scale: global meat production reached 365 Mt in 2024. The Outlook is production-volume evidence, not a retail-value denominator. OECD/FAO Agricultural Outlook 2025-2034, Meat chapter |
| 32 | FAO SOFIA 2024 · aquatic animals Gov't |
FAO's 2024 State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture release reports 2022 production of 185.4 million tonnes of aquatic animals and states that 89% of total aquatic animal production was used for direct human consumption. Estimated first-sale value of fisheries and aquaculture production: USD 472B. FAO newsroom release for SOFIA 2024 |
| 33 | Rethink Priorities · cross-price elasticity review Free |
Shallow review of cross-price elasticity evidence for plant-based analogs and animal products. The authors find wide variation and unexpected signs in butter/margarine estimates, after similar concerns in plant-based milk/dairy milk, and conclude that price substitution between plant-based analogs and animal products is not a certainty. Rethink Priorities: Inconsistent evidence for price substitution |
| 34 | Hartman Group · plant-based buyer dietary profile Paid / summarized |
Multiple Hartman Group consumer surveys: approximately 12–15% of plant-based meat purchasers identify as vegetarian or vegan; 41–57% describe their eating style as omnivore; the remainder are flexitarian. Among all US consumers: roughly 1% vegan, 2% vegetarian, 9% flexitarian — so approximately 88% of the general population is omnivore. Plant-based purchasers skew younger (especially Millennials), female, college-educated, and higher-income relative to the general population. Hartman Group: Who's buying plant-based foods? |
| 35 | GFI Europe · European consumer insights 2024 Free |
Representative surveys in Germany, UK, France, and Spain (2024): only 5% of German, 4% of UK, 3% of French, and 2% of Spanish consumers exclusively consume alternative proteins rather than animal products. 25% of Germans, 23% of UK, 30% of Spanish report either mostly or evenly consuming alt proteins alongside conventional proteins. Top three purchasing motivations (2023 survey, across European countries): taste (53%), health (46%), affordability (45%). Purchase frequency: 10% of German households bought PBM 12+ times in 2024 ("frequent purchasers"); UK 9%; Spain only 3%. GFI Europe: European consumer insights on the alternative protein sector |
| 36 | GFI / SPINS · US natural vs. mainstream channel comparison Free |
GFI analysis of SPINS data: plant-based meat and seafood reaches roughly 8% of packaged-meat dollar sales in the natural and specialty enhanced channel, compared to 1.4% in mainstream multi-outlet (MULO). The natural channel covers roughly 1,900 full-format stores with $2M+ annual sales and 40%+ of UPC sales from natural/organic/specialty products. The 5–6× differential reflects both self-selection by committed plant-based shoppers and a different price/product mix in natural-channel stores. Distribution in the natural channel fell 15% in 2024 (vs 9% in MULO), suggesting continued category contraction even in its strongest channel. AgFunder News: Plant-based meat by numbers (May 2025) · GFI / SPINS analysis |
| 37 | Mixed-household prevalence · multiple surveys Free / summarized |
Multiple US consumer surveys find that approximately 33% of US households include at least one member voluntarily following a vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, or flexitarian diet. This figure means mixed-diet households — where an omnivore adult may be the designated shopper who buys PBM for a veg*n household member — are structurally common enough to matter for interpreting household-level scanner data. FMI: Flexitarians powering plant-based sales |
| 38 | Beyond Meat / industry sources · flexitarian consumer share Free / industry |
Beyond Meat (2018): approximately 70% of Beyond Burger purchasers are flexitarians — meat-eaters actively cutting down on meat — rather than vegans or vegetarians. Exact quote: "An estimated 70% of purchasers of the plant-based Beyond Burger are flexitarians - meat eaters that are cutting down on meat – as opposed to hardcore vegans or vegetarians." This is brand-reported data and should be interpreted accordingly, but the URL is accessible and the figure is real. Flexitarians: The Most Important Target Group for Plant-Based Products |
| 39 | GFI Europe · Netherlands 2022-2024 Free |
GFI Europe press release (2025): 62% of Dutch households occasionally purchased plant-based alternatives instead of meat or fish in 2024, a 13% increase since 2020. The Netherlands ranks 2nd highest per-capita plant-based spender among six European countries studied (€15.78/capita in 2024, behind Germany's €19.92). Plant-based milk held 7.7% of total milk market volume (2024). Plant-based protein's share of Dutch supermarket protein sales: 41.6% in 2024 (unique Dutch metric driven by the retail sector's 60% plant-protein target; includes legumes, nuts, and other whole plant foods, not just PBM analogues). Foodservice plant-based meat volumes grew 111% from 2021-2023. PBM retail volumes fell 6.2% in 2024. Note: the 62% figure likely uses a different methodology (survey rather than scanner panel) than the NielsenIQ Homescan figures used for Germany and UK. GFI Europe: State of plant-based in the Netherlands (2025) |
| 40 | FAO FAOSTAT + Rethink Priorities · animal counts and welfare weights Gov't + Free |
FAO FAOSTAT production data: global broiler chicken slaughter approximately 80 billion birds per year producing roughly 130 Mt of meat; cattle approximately 300 million slaughtered per year, roughly 70 Mt; farmed shrimp roughly 6 Mt from an estimated 370 billion individuals. Wild-capture and farmed fish together involve hundreds of billions of individual animals annually. On a per-kilogram basis: broiler chicken involves roughly 2–3 individuals/kg; farmed shrimp 100–2,300 individuals/kg depending on species size. Rethink Priorities' "Moral Weights" research provides contested but tractable welfare-weight estimates across species — on number-of-animals alone, shrimp and fish dominate over land animals, though the welfare-weight ranking is sensitive to sentience assumptions. FAO FAOSTAT · Rethink Priorities: Moral Weights |
| 41 | GFI Europe · UK & Germany consumer survey · late 2024 Free |
GFI Europe consumer survey (late 2024, published 2025): 25% of German adults and 23% of UK adults reported consuming plant-based meat in the last month; 14% of UK adults reported consuming PBM in the last week. These figures come from the subcategory incidence breakdown and refer specifically to plant-based meat alternatives (alternatives to chicken, mince, burgers/sausages). The broader 56% UK / 60% Germany figure should not be cited as PBM evidence — it covers all plant-based subcategories, dominated by vegetable-based meals (dishes with falafel, lentils, chickpeas: 37%) and plant-based milk (27%); plant-based meat is a distinct and much narrower category.
Key lower bound on omnivore consumption (does not require cross-tabulation): only ~7% of UK adults identify as veg*n or pescatarian (GFI survey; YouGov independently estimates 2–3% identify specifically as vegan). Even if every veg*n/pescatarian UK adult ate PBM in the last week, they could account for at most 7 percentage points of the 14% weekly figure — so at least 50% of weekly UK PBM consumers must be omnivores or flexitarians, by population arithmetic alone. In practice the omnivore fraction is likely substantially higher: data from Norwegian veg*n/vegetarian samples suggest only ~50% of vegans and ~38% of vegetarians used meat substitutes in a given day, meaning far fewer than 7% of UK adults are weekly veg*n PBM eaters. The monthly figure gives a looser but consistent bound: at most 7/23 ≈ 30% of monthly PBM consumers could be veg*n, implying ≥70% are omnivores or flexitarians. The survey does not directly cross-tabulate dietary profile against PBM consumption (the "52% of omnivores consumed at least one plant-based subcategory" figure uses the broad all-plant-based measure). Survey-reported personal consumption is more direct evidence of self-eating than purchase-panel data. Corroborating: Beyond Meat (2018) reported approximately 70% of Beyond Burger purchasers were flexitarians — meat-eaters actively cutting down — rather than veg*ns or vegetarians. GFI Europe: Understanding UK plant-based category dynamics (2025) Food Navigator USA: Beyond Meat consumer claim (2018) |
| 42 | Meier, Freitas-Groff & Woolley (2024) · Nielsen scanner · four-approach study SSRN working paper |
"Why Are Fewer Grocery Shoppers Buying Meat? Declining Grocery Sales, Prices, and Cultural Change." SSRN working paper. Nielsen scanner data. Four approaches: binary choice model with Hausman price instrument; AIDS demand model (with and without instruments, giving puzzling and inconsistent results); event studies around first PBA purchase (which the authors' own placebo/pre-trend tests cast doubt on); matrix completion (also diagnosed as confounded). Overall conclusion: PBA cannot plausibly account for much of the recent decline in US meat sales. Authors themselves note serious limits on causal identification throughout. COI note: Trevor Woolley (Unjournal team member) is a co-author — assess independently. SSRN: Meier, Freitas-Groff & Woolley (2024) |
| 43 | Tonsor & Bina (2023) · Nielsen scanner · G-AIDS USDA/Purdue report |
"Assessing Cross-Price Effects of Meat Alternatives on Beef, Pork, and Chicken Retail Demand in 2022." USDA ERS-commissioned technical report, Purdue Center for Food and Agricultural Business. G-AIDS demand model on Nielsen scanner data. Finding: PBM is a complement to chicken and a substitute for beef and pork. No clear exogenous identification strategy; informally validated against Meat Demand Monitor choice experiment data. DR notes some logical transparency issues and flags this as having room for improvement, though it directly targets the pivotal question. Purdue/USDA: Tonsor & Bina (2023) PDF |
| 44 | Zhao, Wang, Hu & Zheng (2022) · Nielsen scanner · AIDS Journal article |
"Meet the Meatless: Demand for New Generation Plant-Based Meat Alternatives." AIDS demand model on Nielsen Scantrack scanner data. Finding: PBM is a complement to beef and pork, but a substitute for chicken, turkey, and fish — the opposite chicken result from Tonsor & Bina (2023), illustrating the inconsistency across scanner specifications. Identification via Durbin-Wu-Hausman test, which DR flags as a methodologically questionable approach to addressing price endogeneity. ResearchGate: Zhao et al. (2022) |
| 45 | Liu & Ansink (2024) · Dutch supermarket scanner · QAIDS EconStor working paper |
"Price elasticities of meat, fish and plant-based meat substitutes: evidence from store-level Dutch supermarket scanner data." QAIDS model. Finding: a change in PBM price has no significant effect on meat demand; PBMs are complements for beef, poultry, and fish but substitutes for pork. Non-US evidence; the Netherlands has higher PBM household penetration (~32%) than the US (~11%), making this a potentially informative higher-penetration comparator. EconStor: Liu & Ansink (2024) |
| 46 | Caputo, Lusk & Blaustein-Rejto (2025) · hypothetical DCE · food-away-from-home Agricultural Economics journal |
"Plant-Based versus Conventional Meat in Food Away From Home Settings: Substitution, Complementarity, and Market Impacts." Hypothetical basket-based discrete choice experiment (DCE) with extended demand model, food-away-from-home context. Finding: cross-price effects of PB burger price changes on conventional meat demand are very small, with a mix of complementarity and substitution by meat type. DR describes this as potentially best-in-class for the hypothetical DCE method given author prestige and journal. Agricultural Economics: Caputo et al. (2025) |
| 47 | GFI · US Consumer Snapshot · plant-based meat · Jan 2025 Free |
GFI Consumer Snapshot (published January 2025; December 2024 Morning Consult survey, n=3,079 US adults). Dietary-identity breakdown of past-year plant-based meat eaters: 57% omnivore, 15% carnivore, 15% flexitarian, 11% vegetarian/pescatarian/vegan, 3% other. Combined: 72% are active meat-eaters (omnivore + carnivore); only 11% are non-meat-eaters. The 57+15=72% figure is independently corroborated by retail household panel data in the same document: 87% of total US retail PBM dollar spend comes from households that also buy conventional meat ($970M of $1,118M in 2023 NielsenIQ Homescan data), with non-meat-buying households spending more per household ($173/yr vs $54/yr) but representing too small a share of households (estimated ~0.6%) to dominate aggregate spend. The behavioral (purchase-panel) figure reinforces the self-report dietary survey: omnivores and meat-eaters are not only the majority of PBM buyers by count but also by aggregate dollars. GFI: Consumer Snapshot — Plant-Based Meat in the US (Jan 2025 PDF) |
| 48 | Bryant Research · UK plant-based meat consumers · July 2023 Free |
Bryant Research online survey, n=1,000 UK adults, July 2023. Segments UK PBM consumers by purchase/consumption frequency. Key finding on dietary composition: occasional (less-frequent) PBM consumers are approximately 67% omnivores, making meat-eaters the clear majority among less-committed buyers. However, frequent (high-frequency) PBM consumers split roughly evenly among omnivores, flexitarians, and non-meat-eaters (approximately one-third each). This frequency-segmented finding is the key nuance for the weekly-consumer population: while the omnivore share is unambiguously dominant among occasional buyers (67%), it is not a clear majority (~33%) among the most committed frequent buyers specifically. The population-arithmetic lower bound (≥50% omnivore among weekly UK consumers) remains valid regardless, since the strict non-meat-eating population cap applies irrespective of frequency segmentation. The two findings are consistent: overall weekly consumers (a mix of occasional and frequent buyers) will have an omnivore fraction between the one-third floor (frequent-only) and the two-thirds figure (occasional-only), above the hard ≥50% arithmetic floor. Bryant Research: UK plant-based meat consumers (2023) |