> 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.

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...

> You need to meet some more rural friends to see other ways that people live.

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.

We started talking about what people will do.

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"?

"Do you think that the majority of people 100 years go could afford the variety and quantity of meats available to them today?"

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.

My grandmother used to but chicken in instalments... This is in the UK in post war years before the US flooded Europe with battery farmed chicken. This led to the 'Chicken Tax' (see SUV/Trucks). My grandmother would only eat chicken on special occasions, a birthday, a wedding anniversary etc.

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.

"Hunting down animals on the savannah" doesn't scale to 8 billion people. Especially if your goal is that each of those 8 billion people needs to have access to the full variety of every possible type of meat, prepared in every possible way... for cheap, and in massive quantities.