Shifting subsidies to greener and more ethical industries would be a good start. The "fake-meat" improves all the time and if it actually were cheaper (in-store) than the meat option things could start to happen. Typically that's not the case[2]. Probably due to a combination of scale, subsidies, willingness to pay amongst vegans and health concerned customers and store policy (key product might be sold at very low margins/loss to attract customers)

Estimates of the external cost caused by the meat industry (health, pollution) is also quite high. Special taxes can be used here, while cutting taxes on better products.

[1] https://www.peta.org/living/food/10-things-wish-everyone-kne... (admittingly not the most objective source)

[2] Based on Norwegian stores

I think the major barrier to mass adoption of this will be convincing the masses that they should try it. Too bad it can't be marketed as meat, at least not for long before getting caught.

Interestingly, consumers are more likely to try out vegan products if they don't say they're vegan on the front of the package...

The NYT article neglected to discuss that iirc

They've made it similar to ground beef I think.

Investors seem to notice too.

"Why Bill Gates And Richard Branson Invested In 'Clean' Meat" https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2017/08/25/why-bil...

"Richard Branson predicts the world will no longer need to kill animals in 30 years" http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/indyventure/memph...

By the way, if anyone who reads still consumes dairy: that stuff is undermining your health. Replacements are getting close, and given that the replacements are WAY more healthy it is just not the same story as meat. (Similar, but less convincing, case can be made for eggs)

If lab grown meat can "in the future" make a dent in slaughtered meat consumption (can attract "us" away), then plant-based dairy alternatives should be able to do so today.

And they do -- https://www.google.nl/search?q=dairy+consumption+is+down -- all over the western world. Their best strategy: sell it to new markets of people that are, unlike those of European decent, much more likely to be lactose intolerant.

If we can cut down "real" meat consumption by even half, you could in theory make all cows free range.

meat tastiness * degree it affects me > immorality of killing animals * degree it affects me

I dunno, how much worse could it be if it is substituting the meat in, say, a McDonalds hamburger? By the time the cheese and special sauce are added, does anyone notice the difference? Sure, one might have special occasions when you go spend $200 for a real, dead cow dinner. But I’ll bet most meat consumption isn’t in the form of “slab of ribeye” but ground up to be unrecognizable Taco Bell meat and chicken nuggets. I’m also willing to bet the person placing the order at Taco Bell is not in meat conisseur mode, but in “fill the hole so the grumbling sounds stop” mode.

Yeah, if you're only concerned about taste/texture/juiciness, I think that's the easiest concern. lab grown meat is still the same muscle cells. I would bet a lot of money that it's going to taste awesome.

these sentiments are not random when you consider the history of Monsanto, of DuPont, the tuskegee syphilis experiments, etc. You don't need to look far to find reasons to distrust global corporations and governments.

* a.k.a. artifical and natural flavours - the only difference between artificial and natural is the starting ingredient in the synthesis

Whereas, when you have cells, you already have a system that grows and does the chemistry via it's own enzymes. The dream is that you "just add sugar / water / salt" and it'll grow. I'm not saying that there won't be problems. (Like, maybe the meat tissue think that it's stressed or has been cut, if it's exposed to water/air? Maybe stressed tissue will taste bad or produce bad hormones?) But they will be very very different problems.

As an example, given a pastured chicken, a factory chicken, and a lab chicken, is it easier to get the factory chicken to taste like the pastured chicken, or to get the lab chicken to taste like the pastured chicken?

I have never tasted a factory chicken that compares to a pastured chicken, and I'm skeptical about whether it's possible. But nevertheless I believe that's an easier problem than getting the lab chicken right, which of course implies that in my opinion a good-as-pastured lab chicken is exceedingly difficult.

But I'll readily agree we can make something that most humans would identify as meat in the lab and that a large number of them would be happy to eat it. After all, people enjoy eating all sorts of processed food as it is.

Given this, I guess the real question is, can you make a lab chicken taste as good as a factory chicken? I don't know, probably...

Would save a lot of lives from suffering.

Whatever argument you make against this can also be made in favor of making more cramped prisons and working human prisoners to the bone.

Capitalism is designed to exploit externalities, including animal welfare as well as antibiotic resistance.

So we'll have to choice either to undig (and uncontaminate) the fertile lands under the roads and streets in the urban areas, that is a way;

or instead burn the last forests and give our precious natural areas to the pigs, literally. The pressure to ocuppy still relatively intact areas and the last protected sanctuaries for biodiversity would be irresistible and inescapable.

And is a wrong (but much repeated) idea than we'll stop the suffering. Is just that they are conveniently dismissing the suffering caused to the ecosystems. "Gazillions" of savage animals, plants, trees and fungi will suffer inmensely if we scalate the solution to all our cattle.

It doesn't need a billionaire to make this happen (which is why you're confusing me), it just needs culture to change.

Does unregulated Capitalism have the mechanisms to abolish such things with time? If there remain even 10% of meat eaters who want to pay $1 for a hamburger, who can stop the factory farms??

The only thing I can think of is a billionaire buying all the animals the way slaves were redeemed for money in some countries. After that no competing farms could start because they wouldn't have the animals to start with.

They say private ownership of animals will prevent their extinction, like commercial bees. That may be true but what about their welfare?