Sale of artificial meat could be months away

Consumers could soon be purchasing artificially grown sausages with meat grown from stem cells without the need for animal slaughter.

Researchers show the artificially grown meat could be environmentally friendly, with substantial reductions to water, land and energy use, as well as saving millions of animals from the slaughter house, the Herald Sun reports.

However, the "pain free" meat is extremely expensive to produce, with a single meat pattie costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to grow.

The lab-produced meat also faces questions over whether it will be tasty and nutritious enough to attract consumers, with scientists only able to grow white meat strips at this stage because they do contain any blood.

Dutch researcher Dr Mark Post, from Maastricht University, told The New Scientist the first synthetic sausage could be six months away.

Dr Post said he had produced muscle-like strips from pig cells fed with horse fetal serum, and is ready to move onto cow cells.

A Cattle Council of Australia spokesman told the Herald Sun the new technology was not a threat to farmers because of the difficulties associated with producing the vast amounts of high protein substance that would be needed.