Honestly, I just want lab-grown meat for pet food.

I am aware both that evidence suggests that dogs can survive on plant-based diets and that there exists plant-based foods for cats which are supplemented with microbially sourced taurine and other nutrients that are essential to cats but which are not naturally found in plants. However, there is less data than I'd like confirming that dogs can live and thrive their whole lives on a plant-based diet than I'd like + it seems like the difficulty curve is higher for nutritionally planning and maintaining a plant-based diet for a dog than a human, and cats frequently turn their nose up at nutritionally complete but often unpalatable vegan cat foods and are known to just refuse to eat until they starve if they don't like their food. Lab-grown meat would offer an ethical alternative with much fewer concerns for those with companion cats and dogs.

Also, some people have like twenty allergies, health conditions and digestive issues that make a sustained vegan diet at best very difficult. Lab-grown meat would be good for them, too.

In general, though, I do question whether our culture is ever going to get to a point where lab-grown meat gains a viable market share, even though it would be better for both animals and the planet.

Once you stop eating meat, you stop missing it within a few weeks.

This may have been the case for you, but it is not the case for everyone.

Iirc Taiwanese Buddhist vegetarian cooking often uses gluten and mushrooms and other ingredients to mimic the taste and texture of meats as exactly as possible. It came about because many of those who converted to Buddhism didn’t stop craving meat even after becoming vegetarian.

Because the vast majority of people, either through preference or propaganda, do not want to be vegan. Lab meat is a way to reduce the harm done to animals and the environment because it's an easy option for those people to take - it's not ideal, but it's got a better chance of widespread adoption (and thus the most potential improvement) vs. anything else we've got going right now.

Because it's more accessible than throwing a new cookbook at people

If everybody were vegan or vegetarian, that would be fine. Unless you have some way to get everybody else to quit eating meat, this is a pointless argument.

lol. I have known vegans and people living as vegans for years. Heck decades,who said they missed meat or craved it. The one I did not even realize was not a vegan but they would not eat factory farmed things so it was far to inconvenient for them to eat meat. We got a goose that was hunted and they had some and got so sick.