That’s a definite yes. A 2011 study found that clean meat produces 78 to 96 percent lower greenhouse gas emissions, uses 99 percent less land and between 82 and 92 percent less water. Research at the Good Food Institute has concluded that a cell culture the size of one chicken egg can produce a million times more meat than a chicken barn stacked with 20,000 chickens, according to Emery. Energy costs, too, are much lower — and no animal parts are wasted, he adds.

“We won’t be growing the bones and the skin and the intestines that take up resources,” Emery says. “We’ll be vastly more efficient in the land we use.”

How much will it cost?

Experts say cost is the main obstacle standing between consumers and clean meat products.

In 2013, the first clean burger cost $325,000. While the price has decreased dramatically since then, current estimates range from $363 to $2,400 per pound, making it much more expensive than regular meat. (A pound of conventionally produced lean ground beef costs less than $6. Organically raised beef typically costs about a dollar more.)

JUST’s Birdie says the company is pushing hard to drive down production costs. “How do we make these products in order to compete with the price of a Big Mac?” she asks.

The biggest expense, she says, is protein used to feed the cells as they grow. In an effort to improve cost efficiency, JUST has developed a robotic platform capable of screening thousands of proteins to find the best at spurring growth, she says.

And this was from a decade ago. I imagine they've improved the resource need quite a bit since then.