I think we'll eventually be able to recreate "meat" that is equal to or even better than meat that came from an actual animal. We'll reach a point where "fake" meat tastes better, is healthier for you, and, most importantly of all, is more profitable.
There is such a thing, for example the slaughtering of an animal for food.
If you watch the footage of pigs being half-stunned, throats slit, and then drowning in a vat of hot blood, and can earnestly tell me you don't see that as cruel, I promise you I will never make that argument again.
As if that were the only way to slaughter an animal.
It’s how virtually all factory farms do it, which is the vast vast majority of meat that human beings eat. We should make sure we’re comfortable with it before saying it’s humane.
Plants don't want to die either, and they do their best to evolve specifically to avoid death.
Personally I would love to have a device that would pull carbon out of the air and produce proteins. We are not there yet, so plants are the next best thing.
You don't need a device. It already exists, and has existed for hundreds of thousands of years. It's the ruminant-grass-soil-microbe energy cycle.
Suicidal behavior in humans and other animals suggests that this is not always true.