"At the end of the day, what we're looking at is the destruction of an industry."

So said Ido Savir, co-founder and CEO of SuperMeat, a cultivated meat company based in Tel Aviv, speaking of the conventional meat sector. He was speaking to a room full of leaders and strivers in foodtech, and his words were well-received by the crowd. But not by me.

Well, let's back up a bit here: Savir was one member of a panel discussing ways to deal with what is, for the alt-meat sector, a chokingly tight investment environment. His overall point was that all these new meat technologies — plant-based, fermented or cultivated — add up to a food equivalent of a moon shot, and deserve time and long-term investment to develop the technologies to their fullest potential.

Then, his contention was, the value proposition of all these alternative meat technologies will be so compelling when global society is facing unimaginable demand for protein that the conventional meat supply chains will be rapidly replaced.

Nonsense, I thought. I believe that consolidation in the alt-meat industry will include investment by major, and some not-so-major, processors so that they will be providers of "protein" in various forms, not just "meat." Combinations, not replacement, is the future.

Then I realized it's not nonsense at all. It's happened repeatedly throughout the ages: Horse-powered transportation and its oft-cited "best buggy whip maker in the country" were not protected from the automobile. Cities' majestic stone buildings were quickly overshadowed by steel skyscrapers at the turn of the 20th century. Apple's iPhone dismantled the digital camera, PDA and cell phone industries all at the same time. America's vaunted Fourth Estate — "the powers that be" and local papers alike — were cut off at the knees by the rise of the internet.

There's no magic bubble protecting the meat industry from the right kind of new technology.

Whether plant-based, fermented or cultivated meat is the right kind of technology is impossible to say. Certainly they pose no economic threat now, and not for the foreseeable future. But millions are still being poured into this nascent sector and remarkable technological advancements are routine. Plant-based alt-meat makers may just solve their taste problems and cultivated meat companies may break through the biotechnological barriers to industrial volumes of production.

And then what? Will conventional meat companies be ready? Or will its traditionalists still dismiss the whole concept as lab slime?

(And while you're thinking about that, consider the fates of Motorola, Blackberry, Xerox, CBS, The Washington Post, Blockbuster, Sears, and on and on and on.)

'The destruction of an industry'

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