Now here’s a question for all you farmers.

Would you prefer to be trudging round muddy fields in all weathers to tend your livestock or sitting, cosy and warm indoors, monitoring a bioreactor?

That’s not such a ridiculous question as it sounds because inside the bioreactor stem cells from a cow are being fed a cocktail of nutrients and, just like the cow in the field, are growing into edible tissue that is a rich protein source.

This edible tissue can be made into burgers that apparently taste just like the real thing and this is happening now.

Consider this staggering figure: Dutch company Mosa Meat, which is one of the leaders in the field, reckons that just 0.5 grams of cells taken from a healthy cow will produce 80,000 burgers. How’s that for a conversion rate?

Just like in traditional farming, the process begins with carefully selected animals who are said to be ’free to roam the fields’ once a sample of cells the size of a peppercorn has been taken by a biopsy.

The cells are cultured in a lab and the culture is grown into edible tissue in a bioreactor.

It can then be processed and formed into meat products such as sausages and burgers. Seafood products can also be made in this way and are very close to being approved by the FDA before going on sale in the US.

Jim Mellon, one of the Isle of Man’s wealthiest residents, is so enthusiastic about the possibilities for laboratory cultured meat that he has written a book about it, ’Moo’s Law’, and is investing in a number of companies in the sector.

Speaking at the launch of his book Jim, who has the intensive farming operations typically seen in the United States in his sights, said: ’We need to improve our food supply.

’The current pandemic comes out of malpractice in the food chain. We need to do something about it.’

With 80% of antibiotics worldwide being used on intensively farmed animals one of the problems Jim cites is antibiotic resistance, a potentially huge problem in the event of a bacterial infection sweeping the world as Covid-19 has done.

Jim said: ’Covid is a viral infection: it would look minuscule in comparison to a bacterial infection.’

Lab-grown meat was initially prohibitively expensive. Even as recently as 2018, another leading company in the field, Memphis Meats, reported that a quarter-pound of its ground beef cost about $600.

But Jim believes that these products will reach ’griddle parity’ with meat in the next five years or so.

By 2030, he predicts, 50% of meat in the world will be cultured.

’This is an amazing new industry,’ he said.

Amazing indeed, and it will certainly provide farmers with some food for thought.

l Moo’s Law, by Jim Mellon is available from www.harriman-house.com in paperback or as an ebook from £10.99.