I think people will start eating less meat in general. For the better part of a century it has been common in the US to have meat and dairy for every meal. Instead of eating meat 3x per day I think eating meat 3-5x per week will become normal.

Vegan meat substitutes are already a drop-in replacement for the most in-demand meat products like burgers, chicken nuggets, meatballs, etc. Unless someone is a real meat connoisseur they probably can’t even tell the difference.

Even if lab-grown meat cannot meet current demand, it can steal a portion of the market-share from real meat.

Additionally, with drop-in replacements and lab-grown meat demand for real meat can be reduced by raising prices; this can be achieved through the elimination of crop subsidies for animal feed, a carbon tax, or directly through a meat tax.

Isn’t saying “hard to find an angle that wasn’t a ludicrous dead end.” is a little disingenuous? may be currently but science and technology are ever evolving and new discoveries can change things drastically in many ways.

It doesn’t have to feed the whole world, it just has to convince some who are on the edge and who don’t want to move to plant based meat alternatives. And traditional meat isn’t going anywhere soon and wilI probably never go away entirely.

I wonder if the real solution (other than obviously plant and insect based protein) isn’t “reusable” animals… there are lizards that will drop their tail when scared and regrow it without much problem. Thus having a giant lizard tail farm should not be that difficult and the meat is similar to chicken.