If you’ve read William Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer’ - which I’m currently in the middle of - you’ll know why this story caught my eye:

An international research team has proposed new techniques that may lead to the mass production of meat reared not on the farm, but in the laboratory.

Developments in tissue engineering mean that cells taken from animals could be grown directly into meat in a laboratory, the researchers say.

It could be the answer to a number of problems:

“With a single cell, you could theoretically produce the world’s annual meat supply. And you could do it in a way that’s better for the environment and human health.

If it involves no actual animals, no cruelty and no killing could vegetarians eat it?

The new techniques could also provide a dilemma for vegetarians.

Some may feel able to eat meat that has been grown without an animal being harmed.

Others feel that question marks remain about the way the cells would be taken from animals.

“It won’t appeal to someone who gave up meat because they think it’s morally wrong to eat flesh or someone who doesn’t want to eat anything unnatural,” Kerry Bennett of the UK Vegetarian Society told the Guardian newspaper.

I asked my wife - who is vegetarian - whether she’d eat meat that was produced in this way. She would not. The habit is lifelong and meat - however it’s produced - is meat.