Burgers created from laboratory-grown beef have become their top earner says McDonalds marketing chief Ethel Bainridge.

“We have been able to create the taste of prime beef without any cows being slaughtered,” says Bainridge. “This is a superb new product line that provides superior quality and taste, with excellent eco-credentials, at a price no different to our standard burger products.”

“Today, lab beef represents more than half of beef sales in our restaurants – and all driven by customer choice.”

When this scientific breakthrough was initially mooted in 2012, by scientists at Maastricht University in Holland, they were somewhat predictably accused of ‘playing God with the universe’.

It’s interesting how in the past few years animal rights groups, ethical foundations and the world’s ‘green’ movements – and consumers – have aligned themselves with what at first seemed to be the antithesis of everything they stood for.

Throughout recent history, the meat industry has been universally negative about lab-grown alternatives. Today the long-term impact of this new technology is just being appreciated. Cattle farming in the Americas has already been sorely hit and the meat industry has crystallized into two extreme views – realism and denial.

“In 1900 more than half of the workforce worked on farms, and that is down to 3% today. Cloned beef is nothing like the revolution of the past century. We’ve already taken the 97% hit,” says an unidentified blog entry, apparently from a resigned meat industry executive, at MeatInfo.co.uk.

Undoubtedly customers will continue to vote with their palate, and their feet. Certainly all the focus groups have delivered surprisingly great feedback.

Young consumers seem to embrace the idea of ‘cloned’ burgers derived from cows’ stem cells as a really “cool!” alternative.