I've been following this topic for a while, and the interesting thing is that synthetic beef still has to be "fed". What its fed is stem cells and cow fetal materials. So its not "vegan" per-se.
One of the synthetic meat companies switched to leather products as they found out no one wants to eat bio-engineered lab grown steak (also it didn't taste very good)
You may be right in this case (I couldn't find their methodology online yet), but it's just a MVP. They could easily make it without touching a cow beyond the initial cell sample.
It's possible to feed the cells a synthetic culture medium, or something that doesn't come from the cow. I don't know what was done in this case.
We also don't need to continually re-harvest stem cells from the cow. Depending on when they differentiate, there would no doubt be a bunch of growing pluripotent cells, including enough backup cells to start over if batches are somehow contaminated.
I'm no expert in growing meat, but I'm sure the vision is beef without reliance on cows, and the vision seems scientifically possible.
I know about a dozen vegans, and none would complain about small samples being taken from a cow somewhere - potentially thousands of burgers - down the line. Those vegans who have a problem with ANY sample are an unattainable and insignificant target group.
One of the synthetic meat companies switched to leather products as they found out no one wants to eat bio-engineered lab grown steak (also it didn't taste very good)