Define need.
I don't live to be a drone guided by some moral principles of other human who has the same rights as I do.
If I want meat - I will eat it regardless of whether I need it or not.
> And if you insist: there are plant based products today, that are often tastier and offer better nutrients than large swaths of the meat products they replace.
I hear the same mantra for last 10 years.
> There certainly is no lab-grown alternative for a tasty slab of expensive beef (I presume, I haven't looked for it), but there certainly is a tastier and healthier plant-based alternative for that €2,99 bucket of fried chicken things. Or for 6 of the 10 cheap burgers at your supermarket.
You forgot psychological factor. While the bucket of fried chicken is rarely as pretty before cooking as they display it, but in the end it is 100% meat. If we're talking about some plant surrogate, most people would probably puke at the thought of eating this. I certainly wouldn't enjoy it.
Plant-based meat substitutes are ridiculous. Americans, North and South, eat way too much meat (Europeans eat much less). To cut down on the extravagant amounts of meat consumed in the Americas is a great idea, but why do those need to be replaced with meat substitutes? Teach people to cook good food with plants, otherwise you're just keeping them dependent on the food industry that just wants to sell them cheap overprocessed shit that makes them sick and sad.
Why not attack that from all angles? Convince people to eat less meat and more vegetables…sure. But you will still have holdouts saying that they prefer the taste of meat. Hence plant based meat alternatives and lab grown meat.
There can be multiple solutions to a given problem.
I agree on principle but I'm not sure what you mean by "systematic animal torture". For example, for me industrial farming is just that, but small-scale farming (where herds are no larger than a few dozen animals, for cows, more for goats and sheep) are not.
So I think we'll disagree on that. Basically, I think some people find eating animals dystopic regardless of how it's done, while I don't.
We really don't need the amounts of meat (if at all), averagely consumed in the US, EU or many other places nowadays. Not by far.
And if you insist: there are plant based products today, that are often tastier and offer better nutrients than large swaths of the meat products they replace.
There certainly is no lab-grown alternative for a tasty slab of expensive beef (I presume, I haven't looked for it), but there certainly is a tastier and healthier plant-based alternative for that €2,99 bucket of fried chicken things. Or for 6 of the 10 cheap burgers at your supermarket.
Point: we really don't have to wait for lab grown meat. Not if you are a meat lover, nor if you are a habitual meat eater.