Idk, I'm not convinced. You're comparing two very different processes--- artificial flavors are a matter of organic chemistry and if we [humans] are guiding the process, then we have to get every single fraction of chemicals exactly right.

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.

Okay, fair enough. Do you agree that getting factory farm meat to taste as good as pastured meat is an easier problem?

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...