Comment Re:The question is about labeling? (Score 1) 820
Regarding #2: livestock is expensive to raise, but the costs aren't necessarily borne by the producers. Livestock may be raised on public lands, fed subsidized feed from companies profiting by corporate welfare, or not held liable for various consequences of consuming their product: all of these are externalities to the producer and may not be reflected in the retail price of the product. I'm not making an argument for any of these items specifically but I could see an artificial meat process that cost less overall than livestock raising, slaughter and processing; yet resulted in a higher market price.
With respect to labeling, an interesting question will be what kinds of marketing will be viable for artificial meat producers. For example, livestock producers would probably object to advertising claims that their animals suffer or that there's anything wrong with meat production. If artificial meat producers are unable to make this claim and don't have very low prices on their side, then this cedes an important competitive advantage, and it will be interesting to see the result.
I'm reminded of the "Better Cheese comes from Happy Cows" and "Happy Cows come from California" marketing campaigns (the cartoonish idea in the ads was that warm California was a more happening place than cold Wisconsin, another cheese-producing state), which were challenged by some group (PETA, possibly) on the grounds that the cheese producers were not actually making cheese from milk produced by happy cows. Talk radio pundits and the like laughed about the excessive silliness of PETA (or whoever) in bringing the challenge to the campaign. But the problem I have with it is this: if we establish that any claim of relative happiness among livestock must be comic, and can be made by anyone without regard to the treatment of their livestock, then that removes from the marketplace a potential competitive advantage that a theoretical milk producer who did try to use a higher ethical standard might try to take advantage of. In short, while I hardly agree with a lot of PETA says or does, and I don't necessarily think the decision in this case should have gone their way, I don't think the idea that some livestock could be happier than others is laughable, nor the idea that claiming that your cows are happier than the competitions' is a marketing claim that needs to be supported with evidence.