The main reasons I’ve seen from vegans for not eating meat seem to be all about the morality of eating a sentient animal, the practices of the modern meat industry, and the environmental impact of it. And don’t have anything to do with the taste of meat.
Since lab-grown meat doesn’t cause animal suffering, and assuming mass production is environmentally friendly, would you consider going back to eating meat if it were the lab-grown kind?
I feel like there’s a limit to this. How much time has to pass before it’s ethical again? After all, many animals were harmed in the research (selective breeding) of modern vegetables too. It’s a process that took hundreds to thousands of years and a ton of livestock used as farm equipment to create something like the modern carrot.
Poking with a modern needle or using a single cattle by comparison is a lot less sacrificial research by comparison, only it’s more recent.
Of course this could apply to a lot of other things and i realize it isn’t particularly rational. Though on the note of modern needle vs not, a single biopsy on a live animal is causing harm so that’s not a good comparison since that is not vegan by any standard.
But i mention the past suffering here because that is what i would be reminded of eating lab grown meat, rational or not. In general i think if the current process is vegan then it is fine (so using a biopsy on a recently, naturally, deceased animal or from an umbilical cord).