Night Waves - 02/07/2008

Philip Dodd and guests discuss whether mankind has reached the end of the 'golden age of food' and, if so, what can be done about it. They consider the question of recent rises in food prices, said to be driven by a combination of greater use of bio-fuels, changing patterns of consumption in India and China as well as climate change, asking whether we been dangerously complacent. Can and should Western consumers change their relationship with food so that it is not driven by pure economic considerations? Or should we look to new technologies such as GM to deliver the changes needed to meet the problems faced today? And they ask why equal numbers of people in the world are at risk of obesity as are undernourished, while we seem to lurch from one mass production scare to the next, whether BSE or avian flu. How did we get here and could the crisis we are facing have been avoided?