Lots of articles fretted about this. The issue was saturated fats and sodium.
(gift article; no paywall)
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I can’t believe this has to be argued. Alas.
And @Beanolini
Right. But armozel wrote
I think what they meant, and what I wrote, is “anything that is produced by something that doesn’t have a nervous system and/or brain is fair game.
It’s not a complicated conversation. Eggs and milk are produced by animals that do have those things, but eggs and milk do not have those things themselves. Eggs and milk are not fair game for vegans. 
Words matter. We can’t really communicate if we don’t use them for what they mean.
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There are vegans who abstain from leavened bread for just that reason.
The world of options that humans have when it comes to food products means at some point, everyone has to figure out the line for themselves.
If someone served a stew made with cat meat, and you complained so they took out the actual chucks of cat, would you eat the rest of the stew?
Even omnivores aren’t truly 100% omnivores.
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Dude, are you me??
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The suffering of the animals is definitely a factor for me, but my primary concern is with the environmental footprint: globally, animal husbandry causes as much or more greenhouse gas emissions than the transportation sector (depending on what you include in either sector), and that’s without considering other environmental impacts like eutrophication, water use, land use change, biodiversity loss, and pollution of the air, water and soil. Since keeping the animals in a way that causes them less suffering also increases their environmental impacts, there really is no “good” way to consume animal products. Synthesized milk doesn’t have any of those problems.
(By the way, I get that lifestyle changes can be difficult so I don’t want to come off suggesting that you’re a bad person if you eat meat. If you want to be conscientious and reduce your environmental footprint though (though that’s largely a blame-shifting scam invented by BP, different story), reducing how much meat you eat is probably the fastest, most effective, and easiest way. Especially beef.)
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For some people they are impossible without massive social and economic change. I am disabled, preparing food is something I can only do on rare occasions. I am allergic to onions, which rules out over 90% of pre-prepared vegetarian and vegan food. I eat meat not because I want to eat meat but because it is often the only way I can eat at all.
I sometimes come away from these discussions wishing I was still anorexic, eating (or not eating) was so much simpler then.
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Right! Making a choice implies you have options. If the choice is between eating meat or starving, I don’t think you should feel bad about choosing the former.
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Well, let’s look at the record. Billionaire philanthropist, scratch golfer with genius IQ, long flowing locks, abs of titanium?
If you check any of those boxes then no, I am not you.
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This thread seems to be 80% non-vegans racing to define veganism for everyone else. 
A lot of people eat a lot of different things for different personal reasons. Trying to create huge sweeping labels for other people you don’t even know is rarely a successful or advisable enterprise.
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Fair point!
Maybe the real question is, if someone intentionally throws away a carton of synthetic milk knowing a friend will find it, is it freegan?
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Yep, and even getting agreement on this among folks who identify as vegan would be tough. Categories are difficult when anyone can opt in on their own terms (-:
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Hey, no crying over spilled synthetic milk.
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If I remember my handbook correctly, I think we’re allowed to cry crocodile tears over spilled synthetic milk.
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That seems legit, no complaints from me.
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So a typical thread about veganism then? 
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There isn’t an issue, and veganism is of course no more about virtue-signaling than any other progressive political/ethical choice. The post is asking a non-question. “Is this material which is not the product of animal exploitation compatible with a lifestyle that avoid animal exploitation?” The answer is obviously yes.
A more thorny question might be lab grown meat, which (to my understanding) entails a kind of ‘original sin’ of the animal from which the source meat was cultured. But, also, most vegans I know a pretty pragmatic and focused on reducing suffering, and would recognize that even if lab-grown meat isn’t vegan in the strictest sense of the word, its usage contributes to vegan political goals of minimizing unnecessary suffering and unsustainable agriculture (which itself leads to unnecessary suffering).
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Exactly. I’m vegan. My partner, who has a variety of medical issues producing a variety of food sensitivities, is not vegan, despite how much she’d like to be.
And we both recognize her having to eat animal stuff, including sometimes meat, is not a moral failing on her part - if anything it’s a moral failing on the part of the food systems we live in that don’t provide ethical options that meet her body’s needs.
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I believe some of the components of cultured meat comes from eggs which is the immediate ethical sore spot but there’s on-going research dealing with that issue among others. It’s really wild how much synthetic biology has come in a few decades. But to be honest, I’d rather just cut meat out of the western diet or cut it down to as close to zero as possible. And I say that as a meat eater. It’s just easier to learn to cook with veggies and other plant matter than trying to keep the same old western diet and recipes.
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What we have discovered is that in multi-generational veg*n families, it’s the older generations who appreciate having substitutions for comfort food they remember from their younger days, whereas the younger generations are like 'just give me some curry or stir fry or falafel and forget trying to make my plate look like it’s 50% meat, 25% potato, and 25% corn/peas/carrots".
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At World on this year I went to a panel on the future of food, and one of the panelists was very excited about using vats and tailored yeast and algaes to create synthetic, but indistinguishable version of things like meat and milk.
The part of this plan that concerns me is that if the power goes out your vat stops working. The panelist was highly resistant to recognizing that one reason old-fashioned animal husbandry should be maintained is that cattle will create more cattle all by themselves.
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