Animal cells might offend vegans (OK, then try plant cells) but to not see that is a quantum leap away from the ghastliness of in-womb murder is to be willfully blind.
And you still need live human testers in order to map out “here’s what tastes like lime.” And I still wonder why people who donate their bodies to science couldn’t donate taste buds (and olfactory cells) to the cause, getting as close as possible to the horse’s mouth so to speak.
It’s a quantum leap away for you or me. Hippy douchebags see it the other way around.
You use human testers to say “this thing tastes like lime”, but that’s generally going one combo at a time, when you’re making the product you’re putting in bunches of these things and how they’re going to interact is nearly impossible to track. Which is where the cells come in, you want to see how much of each flavor comes through.
The people who donate their bodies to science could. But there’s not much reason for the labs to be grabbing up new cultures when the old cultures functionally live forever. HEK293 was harvested in the early 70s, they just keep making the cell reproduce spawning what the need for tests and maintenance.
It’s about the cannibalism.