The extreme cost-effectiveness of cell-based meat R&D

Abstract

I suspect that cell-based meat research and development could be the most important strategy to protect animal rights and improve animal welfare (with a possible exception of research in welfare biology to improve wild animal welfare), and could strongly reduce climate change. This post describes my very rough back-of-the-envelope Fermi-estimate calculation of the cost-effectiveness of cell-based meat R&D, and compares it with traditional animal rights and vegan advocacy campaigns. I only estimate the orders of magnitude, in powers of ten.