Assembling the plant-based meat proposition: Towards food systems transitions in Australia

The mounting social, ecological and animal welfare issues associated with animal agriculture have inspired research and development on novel protein technologies that promise pathways towards less harmful futures. Protein transitions advocates envision significant changes to food production, including the potential removal of millions of animals from food production systems. This future is not at all guaranteed and dependent upon the complex and uncertain processes through which alternatives emerge and come to negotiate place-based socio-technical regimes. In this paper we extend the multi-level perspective used within the sustainability transitions literature by integrating it with Bruno Latour’s concept of propositions as a way of analysing how places shape and are shaped by emerging niche industries, in this case the plant-based meat industry in Australia. Through interviews, workshops and desk-based analysis we focus on six key elements shaping the plant-based meat proposition: matters of concern, networks, practices, ontologies, recalcitrance, and omissions. The analysis reveals a plant-based meat infrastructure emerging in the shadow of the animal meat industry and a realm of innovative strategies oriented at boosting acceptance, such as hosting conferences, writing reports, and infiltrating animal meat aisles in supermarkets. We identify the many challenges the industry is experiencing, including ontological differences over how it represents itself, the difficulty of enlisting new actors, such as governments and consumers, and the ever-present self-censoring shadow of animal agriculture industries. We also discuss omissions, such as the silences around the impacts on animal farmers, that may ultimately weaken what is being proposed. The paper concludes by reflecting on the worlds actually coming into being in the Australian context, as opposed to worlds being promised, and the need to broaden and diversify engagement with the proposition if it is to move beyond product substitution and engage with the immense challenges of food systems transition.