First off, that hed is terrible. And this could have gone in either Food and Drink or Environment; for that reason, I’m splitting the baby and putting it here, as the “this” referenced is still in research phases.

Inside an anonymous building in Oxford, Riley Jackson is frying a steak. The perfectly red fillet cut sizzles in the pan, its juices releasing a meaty aroma. But this is no ordinary steak. It was grown in the lab next door.

What’s strangest of all is just how real it looks. The texture, when cut, is indistinguishable from the real thing.

“That’s our goal,” says Ms Jackson of Ivy Farm Technologies, the food tech start-up that created it. “We want it to be as close to a normal steak as possible.”

Lab-grown meat is already sold in many parts of the world and in a couple of years, pending being granted regulatory approval, it could also be sold in the UK too - in burgers, pies and sausages.

The elephant in the room is the reporter got to see it and smell it being cooked, but because of the lack of approval, couldn’t speak to the taste.