PETA’s prize may well be a publicity stunt but it also points towards what I believe is the only way to provide animal protein to the growing numbers of people the in the developing world who are beginning to demand it. PETA and the other major animal rights organizations have been trying for decades to get people to abstain from meat. A quick glance at the proportion of vegetarians/vegans in the United States over the same time period will tell you that that campaign has failed and I see no reason that it will succeed in the future. In vitro meat is the only viable alternative because at least in principle it does not require that the consumer sacrifice anything while it removes the living, breathing animal entirely from the equation. Your vision of small scale, “humane” animal husbandry, while a great step forward from factory farming, will not suffice to meet the demands of even current demand levels for meat let alone a future where 9 billion people are living at levels of affluence close to what we now enjoy in the West.

“It is a sad day when we would rather cut down whole rain forests to produce soy beans, and waste precious dollars on fake meat production.”
Perhaps I am mistaking your implication here, but the rain forests are being cut down for soybeans which are then used for animal feed, not to make tofu, nor any other “fake meat” vegetarian product. If we were to adopt in vitro meat on an industrial scale however, there would be no pressure to clear cut/burn the amazon for animal pastures or land to raise soybeans to then feed those animals in feedlots.

I don’t see this ending in a world where we push buttons for our own meals in a pill. Instead, these technologies are allowing for more and more efficient use of our limited resources. Factory farming is a perfect example of this drive towards efficiency. For all the horrors it invites on the animals within it, it is an incredibly efficient model of animal husbandry, and indeed the only one that could feed our insatiable appetite for meat in this country.

While I’d like to believe we could instigate a sea change in the mindset of the general public against the wanton cruelty involved in factory farming, history does not give much reason for hope. Instead, market forces will likely see the adoption of synthetic meat in certain products (ground beef, processed chicken) whether consumers are ready or not. Will it be a better world in 2020 when Chicken McNuggets never required the tortured 90 day existence of a broiler chicken? I’d like to think so.

But yes, PETA is full of a bunch of wild-eyed crazies. The type of farm you support treats animals ethically. PETA wants to elevate animals to the level of humans. I’m not even going to go there. Though I admit that I might be tempted to save my dog before someone else’s child, but like PETA’s arguments, I realize that’s not a rational response, but an emotional one.