Very long... 2K in total may not be endangered, but it's still a tiny population.

A better understanding of how to get them to breed in captivity has been a big part of growing the population. I guess bootstrapping a population to be used for meat would be wildly unpopular, but it could probably be done in a way that didn't have much impact on the wild population or captive population that is used for conservation.

Which I'm not arguing it is a good idea, just pointing out that growing the population partly involved figuring out better panda husbandry, which is the same knowledge you need to produce meat.

Yeah, a good example would be bison. They almost went extinct, and there are only a few thousands of wild bison, and yet bison meat is commercially produced.

The vast majority of these are bison-cow hybrids, interestingly: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison#genetics

I think pandas don't have a fast enough birth cycle for that.

Oh I agree that it wouldn't be a very interesting enterprise as far as making money, I just think you could do it without having much negative impact on the conservation efforts.