I certainly understand this POV, as I once held it, until living and working on an off-grid farm. My point is that the abhorrence towards animal slaughter has

I certainly understand this POV, as I once held it, until living and working on an off-grid farm. My point is that the abhorrence towards animal slaughter has more to do with the industrialized process, and the poor treatment of animals because of mass market demands, then the fact that animals are killed. Animals can be raised and killed in a humane way, and doing so teaches us about the natural cycle of life, a reminder of our mortality. We can certainly choose to abstain from that cycle. But as you say, humans crave the foods they crave. I will venture a guess and say that lab-grown meat will not satisfy that craving. Like GMO tomatoes, it may appear all the same, but beneath the shiny appearance of a solution will be a vacuous gap in substance. We can erode our "food pyramid" with cheap, artificial solutions, or we can do the real work of (1) creating sustainable, humane food systems, and (2) educating people about healthy diets and thus curbing the global craving for flesh. Lastly, what will happen to all the chickens, pigs, cows, etc of the world? Like horses, they will become domestic novelties. People like me will raise them and give them a good life, while their world population shrinks to negligence, until eventually, they are forgotten to extinction, but for the symbolic names of their imitation meat. "Chicken" will be a brand, an algorithm that only slightly differs from the "Steak" algorithm.