We have already had the world's first laboratory grown burger, produced to the cost of nearly €300,000 in August 2013.

Now the food industry is gearing up for the world's first laboratory grown milk product, aptly named Muufri, (pronounced Moo-Free), the final product of which is due to be ready in July 2015. Ryan Pandya and Perumal Gandhi, young bioengineers who work in California's Silicon Valley, have been trialling milk made from the genetic engineering of yeast since May last year.

Muufri’s GMO process starts by adding cow DNA sequences from cattle into yeast cells, growing the cultures at a controlled temperature and the right concentrations, and harvesting milk proteins after a few days.

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Although the proteins in Muufri milk come from yeast, the fats come from vegetables and are tweaked at the molecular level to mirror the structure and flavour of milk fats. Minerals, like calcium and potassium, and sugars are purchased separately and added to the mix.

According to co-founder and CEO Ryan Pandya, one of the reasons he and Chief Technology Officer Perumal Gandhi entered the food industry with Muufri is the challenge of feeding a growing world population, which is expected to hit 9 billion by 2050, and to do so in a sustainable manner.

"There are just such a so many problems with the food industry," says Pandya, who holds a BS in chemical and biological engineering from Tufts University, "and we see this product as one the ways to address them."

Muufri may initially cost twice the amount of cow milk, but without the typical bacteria found in milk, and thus no need for pasteurization, Muufri should have a very long shelf life.

Some dairy scientists, however, are sceptical that artificial milk will ever replace the natural stuff. "The 20 or so components of Muufri barely scratch the surface of milk's complex chemistry," Philip Tong, director of the Dairy Products Technology Center at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California told National Geographic reporter Linda Qiu.

We've been milking [cows] for seven or eight thousand years," he said. "I doubt biotechnology could fully reproduce what Mother Nature intended."