Luke O’Neill, a professor of biochemistry at Trinity College who became a household name during the COVID pandemic, has predicted that lab-grown meat will lead to the end of beef farming as we know it.

“The farms of the future will have loads and loads of warehouses, full of big vats. Inside those vats there will be cells growing like crazy on special structures and you will turn those cells into meat,” O’Neill said on his Show Me the Science podcast.

He said that environmentally this would be very good, as 12% of global greenhouse gases are coming from farm animals.

“If you could replace them, there would be a massive cut in greenhouse gases,” he added.

While he did admit that the change is still a long way off, and that it is just beginning in many ways, he recommended that any farmer should keep on eye on this and be ready to turn their farm into a warehouse of vats full of cells growing to make meat.

He cited the example of Meatly in the UK, which recently started selling lab-grown chicken as a pet-food product.

At the launch of that product in February, the CEO of Meatly acknowledged that the lab-grown chicken “is expensive”, but that the company has “made great strides in the bringing down the cost dramatically over the past two years”.

Lab-grown meat companies such as Beyond Meat have long faced challenges from the high cost of production and lack of consumer demand for the product.

Beyond Meat’s latest financial results for the three months to the end of March showed another drop in sales, and the company needed a fresh investment of $100m (€89.8m) to secure its immediate future.

While lab-grown meat can already be sold in some countries, the regulatory approval process can be long, with UK regulators expecting the first approvals within two years.

The first application for approval of lab-grown meat at the European Food Safety Authority was made last year for a foie gras alternative.

A second application, for lab-grown beef fat, was made in January this year. That approval process, if successful, could take between 18 months and two years.