Economy of scale and subsidies have a major influence on shelf prices. Is is a red flag to be a small producer and/or not profiting from public money? Some wouldn't cold-ban a product only based on it's price, especially if it's pioneering.

Being "certain that the negative environmental consequences are worse" seems an stretch from weak initial judgement.

Higher cost doesn't always indicate negative environmental consequences. It could be (and seems likely to me) that harvesting one cow's worth of plant protein is more labor intensive which isn't necessarily bad for the environment. If you compare two soy crops, one that uses herbicides and another that uses manual labor to pull weeds, the latter will be more expensive and better for the environment