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With animal cruelty taking place in many parts of the world scientists are looking at in vitro meat as an indirect solution. In vitro meat is grown in the lab instead of from the slaughterhouse. Stem cells are taken from the desired animal and is then given hormones  and growth inducing protein. Given the right conditions the muscle cells will constantly divide and increase in area.
Because the research is new in 2013 London held a conference where 3 people shared a $330,000 invitro beef burger that took 3 months to grow. How did it taste? Terrible. This is because the burger was made of pure muscle cells. Believe it or not the flavour and juicy feeling of meat comes from the fat cells called adipocytes. It looked like a normal burger but even that was a lie(eye-candy). "...if it wasn’t for some coloring additives—a mix of beet juice, saffron and caramel—the burger would have looked more like chicken: yellowish and white." -time.com .
The article added that myoglobin, a protein in muscle cells that's job is to store oxygen, will give meat it's reddish look while having a higher iron content. With Sergey Brin, the head of google, funding the program researchers look to further make a synthetic steak with the help of 3D printing. A burger or sausage is simple ground meat so recreating a steak with fat cells and myoglobin is a large step forward.
It is not entirely true that no cow lives are lost in the process of growing invitro meat. The starter up is expensive fetal bovine serum (blood from an unborn cow). In order for the cells to divide faster, FBS functions as the medium containing low level of antibodies with more growth factors-wikipedia. This is likely to change with the production of synthetic serum.
But compared to growing synthetic meat, raising cattle is very inefficient. It requires a wide amount of space while invitro can be grown in a building (preferably a tall one). And many resources like food, water and energy are used. Also, in order to fatten cattle we use our own food supply (soy, grain, corn) which can be problematic with the increasing population. Not to mention that when cows flatulate produces methane which is a green house gas, blocking escaping sunlight.
Winston Churchhill actually predicted that meat grown in a labratorium would happen eventually. As the demand and research increases the price for synthetic meat will be nearing the price of regular beef. It is predicted to happen in the next 7 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adipocyte
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_feeding
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_vitro_meat
http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/edible-innovations/grow-meat-in-lab2.htm
