Now that BM is public, I assume we can relatively easily get answers to information about quantities sold. I would be interested in seeing a Fermi estimate of suffering-days they have averted or something similar. (A simple model is something like: quantity sold times fraction of customers that would have purchased the corresponding animal product times days of suffering per animal product.)
I would think any direct impact would be quite small, as the products are all aimed at substituting for cow products now, and cows are basically a rounding error in the number of farmed animals. It seems like the main impact of Beyond Meat is to drive the plant-based industry further and to establish itself to be able to produce higher-impact replacements down the line.
I believe sausages typically contain pork, so Beyond Sausages might make the numbers look a little better.
Beyond Meat also had a disappointing chicken product, but it looks like they've discontinued sales, and are working on a better chicken product.
I didn't realize they had discontinued the chicken products. That's too bad
Their approach seems like the right move to me:
I could still see a sizable impact coming from the consumer skipping a meal of chicken that they otherwise would have ate and substituting it with beyond meat. It doesn't have to be an exact substitute.
I think it's bad for Beyond Meat's brand to sell low quality products though as they've done in the past.