This is a noble effort. Animal agriculture is pretty terrible. It's massively wasteful in terms of land use and water use. It's incredibly inefficient when it comes to energy use (beef cattle production requires an energy input to protein output ratio of 54:1 [1]). And, of course, there are the animal welfare concerns.

Even given all the problems, I'm convinced that people won't stop eating meat unless there is a market alternative that's at least equivalent in terms of price, taste, smell, texture, and nutrition. While the plant-based alternatives are getting better and better and I'm a big fan, I'm much more excited about the cultured meat alternatives.

Basically, you can think of a cow as a biological machine inside which certain processes occur which lead to things humans like to eat (milk, meat). If you can replicate those process in the lab instead of in the cow, you can get real meat without the negative side effects mentioned above.

Until very recently, this field had been relegated to academia, but there are now several companies working on commercializing it, like Memphis Meats, Mosa Meats, and Modern Meadow. In my mind, this is the only solution: give people real meat, made without the animals.

[1] http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-80... [2] disclaimer: I'm an investor in Memphis Meats (http://www.memphismeats.com/)