No one is "going back to the farm" to raise their own cattle, which they slaughter themselves, for a steak. It also doesn't scale to the "buy cheap steaks and grill a steak for lunch every day" level that some people do. Just the reduction to "I'll have one steak per year" is a significant departure from where we are now (which is a significant departure from where we were 100 years ago[1]).
[1] Do you think that the majority of people 100 years go could afford the variety and quantity of meats available to them today?
I'm sorry, but you are quite wrong.
There are mobile slaughterhouses that cater to this exact market: A farmer raises a couple cows, the mobile butcher slaughters the animal and process the meat into individually wrapped packages. Then they freeze it all and it lasts them a full year till they repeat this process.
Do you need me to find you some youtube videos to prove it?[1] It's common enough that they custom outfit vans specifically to make this job easier (add a power hoist, and pull-out work tables). The butcher drives the van from customer to customer.
You need to meet some more rural friends to see other ways that people live. And BTW I'm not convinced that this is a cheaper way to get meat, instead they do it for the "back to basics" feel, and for the quality of the meat. That's not going to change just because some lab can make some meat.
> Do you think that the majority of people 100 years go could afford the variety and quantity of meats available to them today?
Depends where you live. Some places could, some could not. Especially warrior cultures ate a lot of meat.
[1]Edit: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mobile+meat+sla...
Your rural way of living does not scale to the number of people we currently have living on Earth. It also does not scale to meet some people's current consumption patterns, which is one of my points.
> Especially warrior cultures ate a lot of meat.
"Warrior culture" does not scale to 8 billion people. You can't use this as justification to continue to eat meat while ignoring the negative externalities around its production.
Now you've decided to talk about what people should do.
That's an entirely different topic.
By the fact that you've moved the goalposts, I take it you acknowledge my point that eating animals is not: "one of those things that in 50 to 100 years people will look back on with bewilderment"?
If we go back to our origins the savannah was probably occasionally full of delicious four legged protein just waiting for us to run it down and eat it.
Easter has this 'egg theme', again, eggs were not a year round thing. Available at Easter and sometimes later in the year if chickens had a 'second brood'.
So, no, 100 years ago meat was scarce and valued, not wolfed down without a second thought.
Doesn't this prove too much?[1] Plenty of things were common for millennia before they suddenly weren't. Eg: Monarchies, slavery, beasts of burden, and diseases such as smallpox.
Except that every one of those things still exists! Smallpox doesn't exist, but other diseases such as syphilis do.
So that actually demonstrates exactly the opposite of the point you were trying to make.
Monarchies is an especially bad example because they still exist precisely because people are unwilling to stop a tradition that has gone on that long.
I'm not sure that's the reason; perhaps the largely-symbolic monarchies of Europe, but the substantive monarchies in the world are actually mostly quite newly established.
Really? It's not like we've been doing that for 5,000 years or something. But in 50 years they'll be like "What were you doing for the last 5,000 years?"
Animal agriculture is not going to be one of those things. In fact I can guarantee you that even if we figure out a meat replacement people will still eat animals in 100 years. Something that's been done for 5,000 years doesn't get stopped that quickly.
As evidence look at how many people want to "go back to the farm", and raise their own animals. On the surface, why? It's harder and more expensive. Yet, people want that anyway.