I don't think marketing will be a problem if you consider the industry has no problem selling crap that is made from far more distasteful things than synthetic meat.
It initially won't be sold as "synthetic meat". It will be sold as "sausage", "hamburger" and countless other products of which the labeling isn't protected and which are basically "mystery meat" anyway.
It has been done before, just look at the wide range of fake dairy products which we now consider perfectly normal.
Getting it through regulation will be the biggest challenge.
Why? That's the same as labeling food made with GMOs. If there's no provable difference between the two, putting it on the label is just spreading FUD about the product.
No, putting it on the label is giving the consumer the choice, as well as the ability to follow their food back to its source if they so choose. In a consumer friendly food economy (in other words, the EU, or at least Germany), almost everything is labeled sufficiently to follow it back to the factory or farm that produced it. That, to me, is a very good thing.
The idea that the government and corporations should decide what consumers need to know is repugnant to me. The consumer should be the boss, not the food industry, and certainly not the government. Knowing what you are buying is, in my mind, a basic right in modern society.
Sure, I agree with you. The problem is, if "regular" meat does not need to say what type of cow it's from, what antibiotics were used, what the cow was fed, the living conditions at the farm, the location of the farm, etc, then why make lab grown meat have this label? It will only serve to differentiate the lab grown meat. Unless there's some provable difference between meat A and meat B, they should be subject to the same labeling requirements. To label otherwise pushes the uncertainty onto the consumer.
This is similar to rBST in cows (note that I am only comparing the provable human health impact as a comparison between these two products). I'm quoting from Wikipedia here (you can follow their references to make your own opinion): "The Food and Drug Administration[33], World Health Organization, the American Dietetic Association, and National Institutes of Health have independently stated that dairy products and meat from BST-treated cows are safe for human consumption." [1]. Yet even though the major health agencies around the world agree that there's no provable difference to human health when consuming milk A vs milk B, but I've yet to see milk in my supermarket that does not have the label "from cows not treated with rBST". The impact of that label was so significant that the FDA had to push to get them to add an additional disclaimer, "FDA states: No significant difference in milk from cows treated with artificial growth hormones".
You might argue that people go with rBST-free milk because of the health implications to the cows, but I would need to see some statistics to believe that. If people were that concerned over the cow's health, they would not buy factory-farmed hamburger meat in the same supermarket. I would wager that people are concerned for human health due to the contents of the milk. Not labeling milk as rBST-free or labeling meat as lab-grown has the same effect: it makes people question how healthy it is to consume. Unless those fears are based in reality, all you're doing is causing FUD in the consumer's mind. Unless all meat of the same health impact is labeled the same, you're going to be putting lab-grown meat at a significant disadvantage when, by the time it comes to market, it could be much better for cows than factory-farmed meat.
In short, more labeling on the production of meat is a good thing. But lab-grown meat should not be the line in the sand. It should be labeled on all meat or on no meat (if lab-grown meat is proven to have no significant difference from farmed meat).
Labeling needs to be greatly increased as is, so it's hard to say anything about whether a label specifically for lab grown meat would be fair.
You should have access to information about the cow that your beef was cut from. I'm not saying it has to be all listed out in plain English on the package, but there should at least be a code you can look up that tells you who raised the cow, who fed it and who slaughtered it.
Part of the problem is that no provable difference is not the same as proven to have no difference. The number of things with no provable health risks in 1950 that have provable health risks today is large. Go back to 1900 and it's staggering. The change in recommended diet is equally staggering over the last 100 years. Yet somehow, we always think that now we have it figured out and can say with certainty what the best way to eat is and what's safe and what isn't.
So, if it wasn't obvious, I come down on the side of nature. I want my food as un-fucked-around-with as possible. There is zero chance I would buy lab-grown meat, regardless what research shows. At least not for a few decades. I have no problem with people experimenting with lab-grown meat or even selling it. But I have the right to make my own choice on the issue, especially for such a dramatic change in the way the meat is produced.
It initially won't be sold as "synthetic meat". It will be sold as "sausage", "hamburger" and countless other products of which the labeling isn't protected and which are basically "mystery meat" anyway.
It has been done before, just look at the wide range of fake dairy products which we now consider perfectly normal.
Getting it through regulation will be the biggest challenge.