‘Alternative meats’ include plant-based products currently on supermarket shelves in Australia, as well as more speculative cultured meat products still in development. Alternative meats are enjoying a wave of interest from consumers, retailers and investors, including from ‘traditional’ meat and agriculture industries.  While often presented as a consumer-led disruption of the food system that will deliver improved outcomes for health, sustainability and ethics, these assumptions have become ‘conventional wisdoms’ worthy of more critical sociological analysis. Sociologies of food offer new perspectives on old and emerging questions about how we feed ourselves now, and what and how we should eat in the future. The Delphi method will be used to explore the social construction of alternative meats in Australia and their implications for healthy and sustainable food systems.

 

Jessica is a PhD candidate in the Research School of Population Health. She has an MA (Southeast Asian Politics) from ANU and an MA (Gastronomy) from the University of Adelaide. She has more than 20 years of experience working for both public and private sector organisations in areas related to Australian food, agriculture and trade. She is undertaking her PhD part-time while working in the animal health industry.  Jessica is interested in how new ideas about food emerge and change over time, and how policymakers and other experts understand, respond to and reflect those changes.