I guess when you write “stupid and useless “ you mean the testing, not the protests?
I would agree... they decided to make it even more “lifelike” with fake blood they had to add a new ingredient “heme” made from plants which required the animal testing, as opposed to e.g. the “Beyond Burger “ which uses normal ingredients but is possibly not as “real”. So we can assume they made the decision to kill some animals to get a product with superior marketing capabilities, if we are generous, we can say because they want to “save as many animals as possible “, if we are less generous because we think they likely want to earn more money.
(And very likely they also made the decision that their main market is meat eaters and that offending a few vegans was well worth it - again, if we are generous we can assume they were motivated by utilitarianism)