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There are a couple of reasons why he is wrong—besides the fact that humans evolved to be omnivores.

First, is that humans can only eat high density, nutrient rich foods. In order to feed humans the high density, nutrient rich plant based foods that we require, a large amount of land would have to be converted to specialty crop use. Right now, animals eat low quality plant material that humans simply cannot eat. There are plenty of vegetarian advocates who love to claim that if people would stop eating meat, there would be less cropland—but they always fail to look at the big picture, which is that it does not take premium cropland to grow low-quality plant material to feed animals. And that many parts of plants which are inedible to humans would be thrown away, rather than being used for animal fodder. Etc.

Second, is that it is incredibly expensive to grow cells in culture. And there are very few cell lines that can survive on an entirely plant-based culture medium. The vast majority of cells grown in the lab require the use of fetal calf serum. Normally, this is extracted from fetal calves of cows that have been slaughtered, and the practice is not without controversy. [There is concern that the calf is still conscious after the cow has been killed, and the serum collection procedure would be quite painful to a conscious fetus.] While I would assume this Branson kook is like most liberals in that he has no qualms over the killing of fetuses, no matter how much pain they might suffer, there are plenty of other aspects of raising cows to be nothing more than fetus factories that should make even the densest liberal have qualms. It requires a LOT of fetal calf serum to grow cells; based on the quantities I have used just to grow a fraction of a gram of cells, I would estimate that it would take gallons of it to grow just a pound of “meat” cells. And each gallon is the serum from two fetal calves. So, this scheme to grow “meat” artificially will require vast herds of cattle and the slaughter of several fetal calves for each pound of artificial meat produced. The bottom line is that fake meat made from cells grown in the lab is neither environmentally superior nor more humane than growing animals for slaughter. I also do not see any technological advancement in the near or far future that will overcome the significant challenges of growing artificial meat. Cells require growth factors, lipids, amino acids, etc., which they get from serum—and I do not foresee that even if these things can be recreated artificially using plant-based materials, that they would require anything other than converting vast acreages of now pristine land to crop use. So, environmentally, it is still a bust.