And to provide for what a functioning immune system and digestive system and endocrine system provides in a living animal, in one convenient package that grows right alongside the meat, but instead with external infrastructure? It's crazy what mycobacteria can do to mammalian tissue culture overnight if the wrong dust particle floats in or how many inputs it takes to get non-tumor mammalian somatic cells to divide in a reasonable period in a dish rather than their usual environment. There's reasons that the only industrial biotech processes that use animal cells are things that make antibodies and the like that nothing else can make and are very expensive, and instead everybody else uses fungi or bacteria.
I realize there are lots of practical problems. But "can ever happen" is a long time.
I just found this on slashdot:
"U.S. Views of Technology and the Future - Science in the next 50 years" by the Pew Research Center
This is interesting esp. in comparison to the recent posts on forecasting which focussed on expert forecasts.
What I found most notable was the public opinion on their use of future technology:
Don't they know Eutopia is Scary? I'd guess if these technologies really become available and are reliable only the elderly will be inable to overcome their preconceptions. And everybody will eat artificial meat if it is cheaper, more healthy and tastes the same (and the testers say confirm this).