There are vegetarians who are so partly or wholly because they don’t actually like the flavour or texture of meat. those are not the ones this OP is addressed at.
If we assume lab grown meat successfully takes off to the point you can buy 2 steaks in the supermarket, one of which used top be part of a cow that was slaughtered, the other fully grown a lab, never part of a greater animal whole, and they are pretty much identical in terms of user taste/feel; would you buy the 2nd one? No creatures are being killed for your dinner any more, although I’m sure a lot were needed to perfect the process. They are a sunk cost now though, and buying steak#2 no longer contributes to animal death, so would you still buy it?
Yes I will. If they’re reasonably priced. I eat plant-based sausages and burgers regularly, and I have to say they’ve got really good in terms of mimicking the taste and texture (and in the case of sausages, the cooking smell) of real meat products.
I’m one of those folks who don’t like the texture of land animal meat, so while I would probably eat one, it would be because it is something new and interesting.
However, if the lab meat really is the same as real meat, I will be very happy to feed it to our cats. It doesn’t really seem “right” to me to avoid eating meat, but to keep cats and feed them like the obligate carnivores they are. I think the word hypercritical might come to mind if I thought about it much.
Sure, I’d at least try it. I eat and enjoy various meat substitutes. I don’t know that I’d go too far out of my way to get it- like it’s not like I feel deprived of meat in my day-to-day life and long for the day when I can eat it again. Except shrimp and other various seafood. I think I would make the journey to Whole Foods for some of those.
What would really be nice, though, would be if lab grown meat would replace the use of less-obvious animal products in everyday stuff. Marshmallows, gummi bears, caesar salad, worcestershire sauce, and other stuff that you would never even think has or needs some kind of meat product in it, but there it is on the ingredient label.
As a stopgap measure, there’s insect-based pet food. Right now it’s crazy expensive, but hopefully the price will come down as production ramps up and they get the bugs into their production system.
Quoted from your link: Researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles estimate that dogs and cats account for up to 30 percent of the environmental impact of U.S. meat consumption. If American pets made up their own country, they’d eat the fifth-most meat globally.
I was going to make some flip comment about our cats being fierce grasshopper hunters but then clicked on your link (bolding mine). I seriously had no clue, but also never thought further than my moral dilemma. Wow, you have really given me something to think about tonight!
Oh, and we know when a grasshopper has jumped into the catio because they leave the back legs on the kitchen floor.
Seems to me that Worcestershire is by its very nature a fish sauce, so I don’t really see how you could eliminate the animal product and have it still be the same thing.
Well… right. Which is why lab-grown meat would be helpful in making it possible to make it “vegetarian” without sacrificing taste or texture.
My point is not that these things should be made without the animal product by default. The animal product is usually an integral part of the food. Gummi bears also aren’t really proper gummi bears without gelatin. They’re nice enough candy, but not the same thing and not generally available at, like, any random gas station. It’s that, if lab grown meat were a widespread thing, I would probably still mostly go for vegetables because I like vegetables… but it would also be great to be able to eat homemade chex mix or 7-layer dip at parties and order apparently-vegetable-based soups in restaurants and eat things that have some animal-derived product in them, but aren’t actually themselves meat.
Eh, fishless Worcestershire sauces aren’t too hard to find round here (not all that far from Worcestershire), and I personally can’t really tell the difference- the actual fish content is pretty small, most of the flavour is from the spices and tamarind. Even the Lea and Perrins Worcestershire sauce flavour branded crisps are actually fishless.
Regarding the lab grown meat- I’m honestly not sure if I’d eat it or not. I don’t have any massive reason to avoid it, I just don’t miss meat at all. I’d probably eat it if someone gave me some, but I can’t see myself deliberately buying it.
There’s also the phenomenon a lot of former vegetarians have noted of meat making them feel pretty sick when eaten for the first time in years, presumably due to changes in gut biome- not sure how much of a thing that really is, but given that I don’t actually want to eat meat, why bother chancing it?
(I tried Impossible Burgers - they’re good at doing what they’re trying to do, which is give you the sensory impression of eating rare, blood-red ground beef. As a veg of thirty years, I was kind of grossed out. I prefer my fake burgers to be faker. So no, I guess I won’t be sampling Shmeat.)