“Good-tasting alt meat is a scientific problem we can solve: $10M RFP for Alternative Protein R&D” by Coefficient Giving, abhi_kumar

About this episode

Abhi Kumar discusses the importance of taste in alternative proteins and the $10 million RFP aimed at improving meat alternatives.

By Abhi Kumar, Associate Program Officer in Farm Animal Welfare Over 100 billion animals are farmed and slaughtered for food every year. At Coefficient Giving, we think one of the highest-leverage, long-term ways to reduce that number is to fund the development of meat alternatives that are good enough for people to adopt. Since 2016, we've allocated several million dollars toward the development of better and cheaper alternatives to animal products. We now see an opportunity to go deeper on a set of specific, neglected scientific problems related to taste. This Request for Proposals (RFP) is our attempt to accelerate progress, with up to $10 million available. Why taste, and why now Alternative proteins have the potential to reduce animal suffering at enormous scale — but only if consumers actually opt to eat them. Right now, they're not. Plant-based meat household penetration peaked at 20% in 2021 and has since fallen to 13%. One of the primary reasons is taste: 51% of first-time triers say they wouldn't buy plant-based meat again because the taste didn't resemble animal meat, and among lapsed consumers, 36% say better taste and texture would bring them back — the single…

People in this episode

Guest: Abhi Kumar

Topics covered

• alternative protein
• animal welfare
• taste
• food technology
• consumer behavior

Keywords

• alternative meat
• animal suffering
• taste improvement
• plant-based meat
• food alternatives

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Coefficient Giving

More episodes of EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

• [Linkpost] “The Quest To Find The Next Big Communicators In AI Safety” by Akshyae Singh · June 12, 2026 · 15 min
• [Linkpost] “Scale Scale Scale, Govt. Govt. Govt: 3 concerns” by NickLaing · June 12, 2026 · 10 min
• “Building Ideas-First EA” by Mjreard · June 11, 2026 · 7 min
• “Call for mentors: Sentient Futures Project Incubator” by Sentient Futures, Jay Luong, Constance Li, Sam Chapman, Brody McManus · June 11, 2026 · 2 min
• [Linkpost] “Are top existential risk estimates 50,000 times too high? An optimizer’s curse model and analysis” by titotal · June 11, 2026 · 1h 2m
• “Incumbents Might Be Replaced During AI Takeoff, Including in Animal Agriculture” by Hazo · June 11, 2026 · 13 min