I agree that the answer to such questions lead to astronomical values in number-of-animals for any sort of equivalent. Why I still do not eat meat is simply because it is not necessary, and I can get the same joy of eating by eating something else. It is completely avoidable, no advantage for me, disadvantage for the animals. (Well, there was an argument on LW once that a cow should be happy that we eat cows because this dramatically increases the healthy-cow-life-years, so the cow-utilitarian calculation is mega-positive. However, total-utilitarianism does not seem to match my moral intuitions; I do not know about others.)
However, I do not know how strong exactly the joy of tasting meat is for other people, maybe due to their enjoyment the animals get irrelevant compared to it. I also do not know if the amount of people avoiding killing animals if high-quality synthesized meat would exist.
I agree that the answer to such questions lead to astronomical values in number-of-animals for any sort of equivalent. Why I still do not eat meat is simply because it is not necessary, and I can get the same joy of eating by eating something else. It is completely avoidable, no advantage for me, disadvantage for the animals. (Well, there was an argument on LW once that a cow should be happy that we eat cows because this dramatically increases the healthy-cow-life-years, so the cow-utilitarian calculation is mega-positive. However, total-utilitarianism does not seem to match my moral intuitions; I do not know about others.)
However, I do not know how strong exactly the joy of tasting meat is for other people, maybe due to their enjoyment the animals get irrelevant compared to it. I also do not know if the amount of people avoiding killing animals if high-quality synthesized meat would exist.