Climate change has always been the primary reason PBCM works to increase plant-based food procurement. In earlier pieces in our newsletter, we looked to the history of scientific change for lessons about how new ideas become accepted:

Kuhn: How does a new idea move from evidence to acceptance?
Finocchiaro: Why can institutional acceptance lag behind the evidence for generations?

But what happens when the evidence is acknowledged while some of its implications remain difficult to discuss?

This is where forecasting offers an interesting perspective. Metaculus, a forecasting platform and prediction aggregator, has launched its Animal Futures Tournament, asking forecasters to assign probabilities to questions involving plant-based foods, meat consumption, cultivated meat, corporate animal-welfare commitments and other developments affecting animals. The purpose is practical: better forecasts can help organizations make more informed strategic and funding decisions. In effect, questions that have often been framed primarily in ethical terms are increasingly being treated as outcomes that can also be measured, forecasted and used in decision-making.

Changing what institutions serve does not produce only one outcome. Fewer animal-based meals can mean lower greenhouse-gas emissions, different health outcomes, reduced pressure on land and biodiversity, and fewer animals entering the food system.

Animal welfare has traditionally been a difficult subject for organizations working on food policy. It can quickly move a conversation from evidence about climate and procurement into deeply held beliefs about ethics, culture and personal choice. But that is what makes this development interesting. By putting probabilities around future outcomes, forecasting does not resolve the ethical debate. It does something different: it makes change observable and testable.

In our earlier posts, I used the phrase “history doesn’t repeat itself exactly, but the patterns often do.” Animal welfare may represent another issue moving through a familiar progression:

Taboo -> Evidence -> Measurement -> Institutional consideration → Pilot

PBCM does not have to change its mission to recognize this connection. In fact, PBCM’s accomplishments across the university, municipal, federal and health-care sectors provide an interesting point of comparison. Forecasters are estimating what changes may occur in the years ahead; PBCM can measure changes that institutions are already making today. Increases in plant-based procurement can therefore be evaluated not only through their climate impact, but also through their health, land-use, biodiversity and animal-welfare co-benefits.

Consider one question in the Metaculus Animal Futures Tournament: “What will be the total retail sales of plant-based meat and seafood in 2026?” The current community forecast is approximately $6.8 billion. This is more than a forecast about the size of a market. It is one measurable indicator of how quickly the food system may be changing, along with providing a benchmark against which organizations such as PBCM can compare the changes they are seeing within institutions.

Metaculus forecast: 2026 plant-based meat and seafood sales

Perhaps the next step in evidence-based food policy is simply to measure all of its consequences, not only the ones we are most comfortable talking about.