Animal Futures: what the forecasts say so far
Feedback welcome: Use the Hypothes.is sidebar at the top right to annotate this report. To comment on the dashboard, open it and use the sidebar there. Corrections, missing sources, and suggestions are useful.
The Animal Futures tournament still has 21 questions and one resolved outcome. Participation is growing: the original 16 questions now average 56 forecasters each (49–74); the five September additions average 26 (23–31). These are per-question account counts, including some bots.
The broad forecast picture is steady. The crowd gives 2% to plant-based meat and seafood reaching 10% of US retail packaged-meat dollar sales before 2031 (1.4% in 2025). Separately, it gives 1% to Nueva Pescanova’s octopus farm being approved before June 2027. It puts roughly 80% on another US state cultivated-meat ban before July 2027. For Q1 2027, in-ovo sexing estimates remain far apart: 43.7% of EU commercial layers and 2.96% of the US flock.
One useful finding: a Plant Based Cities Movement article cites the approximately $6.8 billion plant-based sales forecast as a possible benchmark for its institutional food work. That documents public engagement with a forecast. The article reports no resulting procurement, funding, or policy change. Which forecast, at what threshold, would change a decision? This remains the most useful question for organizers, funders, and advocates to answer.
A new Mexico consumption comment asks for resolution from a USDA release. The question is still open. Its outcome is the first available official forecast for 2027, rather than realized 2027 consumption; the proposed result still needs verification. There are now 36 comments across the questions, and eight questions have none.
The cultivated-meat approval question remains the only officially resolved outcome. The dashboard retains the ANIMA benchmark and resolution-definition discussions, plus suggestions for organizers. One resolution is too little to judge tournament accuracy.
Weigh in. Add forecasts and evidence on the Metaculus questions. On this report or the full dashboard, highlight a passage and use the Hypothes.is sidebar to suggest a correction, add a missing source, identify a decision this could affect, or propose a useful next question. See the dashboard’s suggestions for running the tournament.