While I'm excited at the all the possibility that lab grown meats can provide - ethically produced meat, less environmental impact, "cleaner" food - my judgement will have to be reserved until after leave scale production begins. What the definition of "clean meat" is today may not be what I agree with tomorrow.
It does promise a huge change though. Ideally, you keep a few cows and bulls reproducing, making tastier stem cells for further replication.
In essence, you could feed a huge population of humans using only a few individuals, although it would still be wise to keep those "stem" cows in case sickness or something else strikes them.
That being said, I'm afraid at some point the economic incentives will just go onto making a bunch of embryos mature and harvesting them completely for stem cells.
Regarding "ethically produced meat" - I have the sense that if we can arrange for livestock conditions better than their typical experience in nature, then animal experience is overall improved to some degree. If that is arranged then the more animals we can do that for, the more gross experience is improved over the natural level (which due to extant harshness is not all that hard to better) We should also for animal keepers own feelings and experience at work, regulate that animal suffering is reduced to a hard minimum.
Its paradoxical that we can't try arrange this for actual wildlife which is often as much in conflict with its neighborhood as it is at peace, or the wild systems will break down, by removing pressures, saving young from predation etc.
