So it’s made of shit, right? And shit is an animal product. But barring a night of drinking or a particularly aggressive burrito, shitting does not harm the shitter; it’s beneficial and required. Also the animals in question can and do consent, does that make it vegan?
It does? Assuming the replicator doesn’t get the matter it’s composing replicated “meat” from disassembled animals, what is it that makes replicated “meat” not dietarily vegan? Taste? Nutritional profile? Chemical indistinguishability?
Is real world Impossible meat dietarily vegan? Could Impossible meat be made not dietarily vegan without actually using animal products in its manufacture? Maybe with nutrient fortification of some sort or a more sophisticated chemical process that produces proteins more chemically similar to meat proteins? Shaping the vegitable-derived matter into little muscle cell shapes? Adding gristle and fat?
What about converting pure plant material into a whole living cow indistinguishable from a naturally bread/born cow, and then slaughtering, butchering, and griding it into ground “meat”?
I dunno. I’m no vegan and I’m not sure if you are. Maybe among vegans, it’s an accepted consensus that Impossible is not dietarily vegan (though maybe morally vegan? Not sure.)
I and a friend of mine were talking about the “paleo diet” at one point. The subject turned to paleo substitutes for dishes that were decidedly not paleo. Paleo breads, pastas, candy, etc. And he expressed a distaste for the entire idea of eating foods that approximate very not-paleo dishes, calling them “faileo”. Heh. I suppose one could say such foods are paleo in one sense and not the other. (Though if one were to discuss “moral paleo-ness” and “dietary paleo-ness”, I’m not sure which one they’d qualify as and which one not.) Maybe Impossible is similarly morally vegan but not dietarily vegan.
It depends on why someone is a dietarily vegan. If someone is such because they need to avoid something in animal products, like cholesterol, or an allergen. Impossible meat would be fine. If they are “whole foods, plant based” then they probably aren’t going to eat an impossible burger unless they don’t have better options. There’s a whole spectrum of reasons people go vegan, and most of the ones I know have a combination of moral, health, and environmental reasons.