By Chris Evdaimon

Imagine eating a steak that didn’t require slaughtering an animal. A real steak, not a plant-based alternative, and with the same delicious taste and texture as the classic farm-reared product.

The global meat market is a $1 trillion annual business. In 2016, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations estimated global demand would double by 2050, driven by population growth and greater spending power in developing economies. But traditional farming brings environmental and societal costs and challenges.

Meat cultivation – growing animal cells in vitro, meaning outside of a living organism – offers a solution. Industry frontrunners such as Upside Foods are on track to deliver consumer-ready products within a few years.

The advantages go beyond preventing the death of millions of animals. Cultivated meat could eliminate the rising risk of animal-borne diseases and antimicrobial resistance, which reduces the effectiveness of treatments for infections. It should also significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the use of land and water – all while saving on costs.

The technology involved can be compared with harvesting crops, hence the term “cultivated”. But rather than wheat, corn or soybeans, it is growing animal cells in bioreactors – steel vessels where raw materials are turned into a product via a chemical process. That can be applied to all types of meat, as well as seafood.

Modern meat production is driving the climate crisis. If the global livestock industry were its own country, it would be the world’s third-biggest greenhouse gas emitter, falling behind China and America but before India.

These emissions relate to every step of the production process, with methane gas expelled by cows and sheep being a major cause.

That’s not to mention the associated drain on the earth’s vital natural resources. More than a quarter of our “fresh water footprint” – the amount of safe and clean water used to produce consumer goods – goes towards the meat and dairy industries, which require an incredible amount to produce animal feed.

Livestock farming is also driving unprecedented levels of deforestation to make way for grazing and feed crops. That, inevitably, causes biodiversity loss.

We currently slaughter more than 70 billion animals annually – about 200 million every day. Do we even have space on the planet to double that by 2050? Using today’s farming techniques, it would require nearly twice the landmass of America and Canada combined.

Perhaps more to the point, can we afford it?

A Big Mac could cost as much as $11 (£9.82)without subsidies funded by consumer tax dollars. That’s about three times its current price, according to calculations by David Robinson Simon, author of Meatonomics.

In terms of caloric conversion, rearing animals is an incredibly inefficient mechanism to produce edible protein. So why spend the energy growing the complete animal, with its bones, vital organs and inedible parts, when we can grow only the parts we want to eat?

However, this solution is within reach and although Upside Foods is a frontrunner in this emerging sector, it’s not the only player in the game. US-based Wildtype, which is cultivating salmon, states cell-cultivated seafood provides the same nutritional benefits without the mercury, microplastics, antibiotics and other contaminants commonly found in wild-caught and farmed fish. Its pilot plant in San Francisco became operational last year.

Israeli firm Future Meat, which is focused on producing chicken, lamb and beef, raised $347 million in a funding round late last year and is now planning for a production ramp in the US.

The main challenges facing these companies are taste, followed by cost. So, the goal is to get cultivated meat products to consumers with the same flavours and textures they are used to at an affordable price.

The size and speed of the scale-up will need to be huge and rapid if cultivated meat is to become mainstream within the next decade. Limits to bioreactor capacity and amino acids are among the issues that the food industry will have to address.

As an anti-scientific mindset lingers in food related-matters, we can’t be sure people will want to eat cultivated meat until it hits the shelves.

There are potential teething problems with cultivated meat, but not insurmountable ones. For example, we might not be able to forecast its climate-related benefits precisely, but we are sure it will use significantly less land and water than farming livestock. Also, because it will take place in a controlled environment it should be more predictable and efficient. Lack of bacteria in the bioreactors could also double the shelf life of cultivated meat products, thus reducing waste.

As the challenge of sustainably feeding the world becomes ever more pressing, we expect further companies to embrace the endeavour of revolutionising the way we eat.

Chris Evdaimon is investment manager at Baillie Gifford.