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Episode details

World Service,05 Dec 2014,26 mins

Food Technophobes v Technophiles

The Food Chain

Available for over a year

Who should decide whether a food-related technology is safe? We hear from Mike Mack, CEO of Syngenta, one of the world’s biggest agri-businesses and from Bart Staes, food spokesperson for the European Parliament's Greens Group. We look at the science behind crop farming, from genetically modified crops to pesticides. Professor Ottoline Leyser, director of the Sainsbury Laboratory at Cambridge University, explains how exactly a crop is genetically modified. And could some types of pesticides be harming bees? Are you a food technophobe or technophile? We get views from across the globe, from Nairobi to New York, on the best way for science to help feed the world.

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