Climate

You mean donkeys?

Don't forget the cross subsidies from co-products.

If ground beef (aka beef mince in the UK where this story is running) is the cheapest trimmings that remain after all of the expensive cuts have been processed, it's entirely possible that the low price for this byproduct is partially subsidized by the high prices for the premium product (expensive steaks, moderate expense whole cuts). Plus things like hides for leather.

For now, the plant-based competition is aiming at the types of meat that are easier to mimic or replace with plant-based foods. And unfortunately, those happen to be the cheaper types of meat. If we get to the point where there is significant plant-based competition to filet mignon, that product will have a lot more room to work with in being price competitive.

Pricing inputs get complicated, and government subsidies are only a piece of the picture.

If the meatless option is 29% cheaper, the meat option is .29/(1-.29) = 41% more expensive, not 29%. Meatballs in the article are .41/(1-.41) = 69% more expensive than plantballs, which is close to your target number.

I remember the days when a veggie cheeseburger was a grilled cheese sandwich. Progress.

meat and dairy subsidies

That has been proven to be incorrect: https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/meat-subsidies

Removing the subsidies would rise the prices by cents.

Raw food - any food - is dirt cheap. Most of the costs is the chain of logistics (and that every middleman takes their cut).

Same with alcohol-free beer and other drinks. Somehow they always cost considerably more than regular ones.

Not sure what you mean by BM (I assume Beyond Meat?), but every single plant-based food comes out insanely far ahead from animal based foods

Plant-based foods have a significantly smaller footprint on the environment than animal-based foods. Even the least sustainable vegetables and cereals cause less environmental harm than the lowest impact meat and dairy products [9].

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/html

If I source my beef or lamb from low-impact producers, could they have a lower footprint than plant-based alternatives? The evidence suggests, no: plant-based foods emit fewer greenhouse gases than meat and dairy, regardless of how they are produced.

[…]

Plant-based protein sources – tofu, beans, peas and nuts – have the lowest carbon footprint. This is certainly true when you compare average emissions. But it’s still true when you compare the extremes: there’s not much overlap in emissions between the worst producers of plant proteins, and the best producers of meat and dairy. https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat

Meat and dairy are heavily subsidised

Just of the top of my head here are some possible ideas to explain why not:

• Meat subsidies
• Meat substitutes require more processing and additional ingredients
• Meat sells a lot more than meat substitutes hence the whole chain benefits more from economies of scale
• Animals raised for meat can extract nutrition from plants and parts of plants which humans cannot (for example cattle can actually break up the fiber in food and extract nutrition from it, which humans cannot), plus they can eat plants which are far more hardy than most plants grown for human consumption. Some will also eat other animals which humans do not, such as insects.

I doubt it's just one of those things that is responsible and suspect it's a mix of those and maybe more.

This is correct, however:

You need to also take into account that plants are just the primary ingredients and it needs a lot of intermediary steps during manufacturing.

I say this not to say you're incorrect but just to be a more complete picture so it's unassailable

You shouldn't be paying that much for Bolognese sauce, it is cheap to make and tastes better.

Bro how expensive are tomatoes in the UK for bolognese to be that much more expensive than the meat to put in it?