Can lab-grown meat actually replace regular beef in a few years?

Getting the cost down to price-parity with conventional beef is the real bottleneck, and we're nowhere near that yet. Labs can grow the cells fine, but scaling up bioreactors and cutting production costs per kilogram takes years of investment and engineering work that's still in progress. A few years is too optimistic - most realistic timelines put meaningful market competition at a decade out, and that's assuming funding stays strong and no major technical snags pop up. It might start replacing beef in niche restaurants or processed foods sooner, but your average grocery store? That's still a ways off.