TL;DR: the meat industry’s misleading messaging campaign + lobbying
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Yes, price is an important factor. Especially because people who are regular meat eaters think that by becoming vegan that they’ll be spending their meat money on fake meat, thus becoming poorer. This is generally not true, because once you learn to cook vegan you’ll not be using fake meat a lot, but it sure does cause a hurdle to new vegans.
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I believe a lot of it also is the price, as someone who has worked in the plant based meat industry for years. It wouldn’t be hard to design a product that is comparably priced with meat but it is seen as a premium space where more money can be charged so companies do charge more, from the finished food manufacturers to the ingredient suppliers. Also hard to compete price wise with meat subsidies, in the US anyway
Capitalism is gonna capitalism
But it is much easier to just blame the meat industry for all shortcomings of the plant based industry.