Disrupting the Meat Industry: Tissue Culture Beef

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SWOT Analysis

Strengths:

- Positive impact to animal welfare, the environment, and solving global food and hunger issues.

- Require less land and less energy and yield significant amount of food with minimal inputs.

- Change the way people thought about their food. Saving animals and planet.

Weaknesses:

- Disrupting the food chain.

- Had potential to disrupt millions of jobs worldwide dependent on the established beef production and supply chain.

- Challenging questions from some consumers.

- Difficulties to find experienced food industry partners to help with channel management, logistics, and to reach consumers, as well as expanding to new markets.

- Higher cost of producing culture beef

Opportunities:

- Disease outbreaks and animal health issues severely affected global trade. Tissue Culture meat don’t have those problems.

- Global demand for meat was forecast to rise significantly by 2050 due to average wages increased and population grew.

- The developing world was expected to continue driving increased meat demand.

- Consumers were increasingly worried about antibiotics and other drugs in animals.

- Cattle’s potential detrimental effects on the environment: contributed to global greenhouse gas emissions, produced a substantial amount of waste, and consumed a large amount of water both directly and indirectly.

Threats:

- Meat was still popular in the developed world but people were replacing beef with other meats.

- Some medical professionals had encouraged consumers to eat leaner meat with less fat, consume smaller portions, or replace meat with foods such as bean.

- Public attitude toward tissue culture beef.

- Transparency issues with the public.

- It is unclear what the public reaction would be.

Evaluation of Alternatives

As we know it will be very difficult for consumers to trust the tissue culture meat. Our biggest challenge will be getting consumers to try the new type of meat. One alternative to help push consumers to try our product over traditional meat sources will be an advertising campaign that highlights the downfalls of the current meat industry specifically the inhumane treatment of the animals, and the lack of sustainability in the current meat industry. We will highlight the facts that the current meat industry will not be able to keep up with the growing demand for meat and as it is now there is little to no quality control over the treatment of the animals. While showing consumers the harsh facts about the traditional meat industry, which they choose to ignore because there is no other option, we will highlight the benefits of tissue culture beef. Some of which would be facts like harvesting tissue culture beef will use 90% less land, 70% less energy, and actually produces much healthy meat. We feel like people now are forced to overlook the downfalls of the current meat industry because there is not a viable alternative however if we show them the downfalls and say here is an alternative so you can avoid all these horrible things people will jump at the opportunity to try Tissue Culture Beef.

The other challenge we meet is how to make the tissue culture meat become available for consumers. The alternative of this challenge is to partner with one of the big companies, instead of partner with governments or follow the examples of Apple or Tesla Motors. By choosing partner with big company will give tissue culture meat more developing space and get rid of public relation risks.

Decision Criteria

Dr. Post and his team have two key decisions to make whether to partner with one of the big companies or start a smear campaign against the current meat industry. His goal is to convince consumers to accept his product as real beef and want to make a purchase. The three key factors are used to determine which alternative is better than the other.From the table below, smear campaign was scored higher than partnering with one big company. In both cases, each alternative has to be credible and represent a good public image for the tissue culture beef to gain consumers acceptance. We also weigh in on the cost and benefits analysis and believe that by launching a negative advertising campaign against the current meat industry that would be more beneficial. The cost may be more to run the ad campaign than partnering with one of the big companies, but the benefits are outweigh the cost. If Post keeps putting negative image and reminding consumers the reasons why current meat industry is bad to the environment and animal welfare, eventually consumers will consider his product as better alternative. Lastly, we believe that the smear campaign will better reach target consumers. It is in human DNA that people tend to consume more of the negative press than positive one. The more negative ad campaigns being targeted at the current meat industry, the more likely consumers will find an alternative for their current product.

Alternatives

Creditability

Cost/Benefits

Target Consumers

Total

Partner with One Big Company

3

2

2

7

Smear campaign against current meat industry

3

3

3

9

Recommendation

For our recommendation we will be selecting a marketing campaign against the current producers in the meat industry. We will be focusing on the producers lack of humanity when dealing with animals, and accompany that view