Hank Hyena predicts that the development of in-vitro meat will cause radical changes in people’s lives. I’m not so sure. For example, Hank predicts:

When In-Vitro Meat (IVM) is cheaper than meat-on-the-hoof-or-claw, no one will buy the undercut opponent. Slow-grown red meat & poultry will vanish from the marketplace, similar to whale oil’s flame out when kerosene outshone it in the 1870’s. Predictors believe that IVM will sell for half the cost of its murdered rivals. This will grind the $2 trillion global live-meat industry to a halt (500 billion pounds of meat are gobbled annually; this is expected to double by 2050).

I think that this is completely off. Barring an outright ban of the selling of real meat, I think that there will always be a large market for it. Price isn’t an object here. There’s a reason why organic sells so well despite the higher prices. Will it be the dominant market? No–IVM will no doubt replace the real thing. But it will be a long process and there will always be people who insist on real meat for a variety of cultural and culinary reasons.

In-Vitro Meat will be fashioned from any creature, not just domestics that were affordable to farm. Yes, ANY ANIMAL, even rare beasts like snow leopard, or Komodo Dragon. We will want to taste them all. Some researchers believe we will also be able to create IVM using the DNA of extinct beasts — obviously, “DinoBurgers” will be served at every six-year-old boy’s birthday party.

I’m willing to bet that, barring some fantastic new flavors, this type of thing will remain a curiousity or novelty, and cultures will largely eat the IVM versions of the meats they always have. Taste has a strong cultural component that is very conservative.

Humans are animals, so every hipster will try Cannibalism. Perhaps we’ll just eat people we don’t like, as author Iain M. Banks predicted in his short story, “The State of the Art” with diners feasting on “Stewed Idi Amin.” But I imagine passionate lovers literally eating each other, growing sausages from their co-mingled tissues overnight in tabletop appliances similar to bread-making machines. And of course, masturbatory gourmands will simply gobble their own meat.

Okay, this is just vastly underestimating the power of taboo. I’ll put a hundred dollars down right now that the production of human IVM never builds a market over $10 million dollars per annum and I’d be willing to bet an equal amount that the production of human IVM is banned within five years of first production.

The convenience of buying In-Vitro Meat fresh from the neighborhood factory will inspire urbanites to demand local vegetables and fruits.

IVM factories will almost certainly be zoned outside of residential areas and urbanites will almost certainly buy their meat in the grocery store the same way they do now.

his will be accomplished with “vertical farming” — building gigantic urban multi-level greenhouses that utilize hydroponics and interior grow-lights to create bug-free, dirt-free, quick-growing super veggies and fruit (from dwarf trees), delicious side dishes with IVM. No longer will old food arrive via long polluting transports from the hinterlands. Every metro dweller will purchase fresh meat and crispy plants within walking distance. The success of FarmScrapers will cripple rural agriculture and enhance urbanization.

This is a possibility, but not a probability, and zoning commissions will probably lag a good 10-15 years behind the curve in allowing this. I doubt that there will ever be enough room allowed in urban areas to grow in such a way that it overcomes rural, traditional methods of food production.

I’d encourage you to read the whole article, which is good in its own right, makes some excellent points (ie, the ones I didn’t criticize here), and provides some excellent resources for further reading. But Hyena makes the same mistake that a lot of people who live on the cultural bleeding edge do, which is to underestimate the power of cultural inertia in slowing down or outright stopping radical social change. I do think that IVM, when its developed, will be an amazing invention and will almost certainly become the dominant form of protein. But it will take a while and won’t be as groundbreaking as some people imagine.