McDonalds will eliminate cage-confined chickens from its supply chain

[APeacefulWarrior]

Okay, I guess it's important to envision a future with meat available for consumption. I have no desire to consume animal tissue anymore so I guess I'm not on this bandwagon.

This isn't about your personal eating choices or mine, especially since we're lucky enough to live in areas where we have enough food options available to make deliberate choices based on philosophy rather than necessity.  This is about the reality that by 2100, we're going to have something in the neighborhood of 11 billion mouths to feed.  

And if they don't get fed, then we have widespread instability, chaos, and probably bloody revolutions.  Or else a massive die-off.

There are still poor people starving. A huge percentage of the population is still hungry. How have we solved the problems of the poor? So, some of the poor in developed countries have mock food to eat. I guess this can be seen as a step up.

You call it "mock food."  They call it survival.  And as we continue to bring modern technology to more of the world's remaining undeveloped areas, we'll be able to continue feeding more of those people who are currently starving.  Or if you want a practical example, look at Ethiopia.  What used to be the literal poster child for widespread starvation thirty years ago is now being called the "Lion of Africa" and has one of the fastest-growing economies on the continent.  They're on track to be a middle-income country by 2020-2030.

I'm not sure if you're aware of the technologies that have arisen in recent years re: growth of food in small spaces, ie hydroponics. We can set up the infrastructure to grow food anywhere. Instead, we demolish rainforests so that we can graze cattle for hamburgers.

There's no hydroponics system anywhere that could allow a full family living in a small apartment to feed themselves sustainably. In many places, especially Asia, <500SqFt apartments are becoming increasingly common.  And as far as I know, even the most advanced proposal for a "vertical farming" system on the side of a high-rise -which is really cool tech- would at most supplement the building's food usage, not become its sole source.  And there's the issue of the huge costs involved in building and\or retrofitting such systems, as well as their ongoing maintenance.  Adding complicated machinery to the side of existing buildings demands a lot of time and energy and money, no matter how cheap the hydro systems themselves might become.
 
If you can find an article to shows me wrong about this, I'd be happy to take a look.  I'm all for the idea of more localized farming.  But I'm pretty certain no such systems exist, nor are there even any proposals on the drawing board for one that might accomplish actual self-sustainability for the billions of city-dwellers who need to stay fed.

And again, the article about lab-grown meat that was posted here was satire. It was posted on April 1st.

And again, I am posting actual articles to actual sources talking about this.  There's no reason for you to keep bringing up the satirical article.

Sure, lab-grown meat can potentially solve the "cruelty problem ", but not because it will be easier or more humane, but because it will be cheaper.

So what?  You say that as though it invalidates the lives being saved thanks to modern food technology, even if it isn't getting rolled out as fast as we might like.  You aren't actually implying you'd rather see people die than see corporations make money, right?  

I'll say yet again, there ARE many actual problems with the food systems as they exist today, but they're the best option on the table given the reality of the human population and the amount of land the average person will have to work with.  But we're slowly moving towards fixing those problems.  And with 'next gen' food-creation systems like lab-cultured meat (likely supplemented by the hydroponics systems you're talking about) it's honestly not implausible to think we'll be able to largely eliminate large-scale animal farming within a century or so, and without major social disruptions.

I really don't understand why you seem so dismissive of the idea.