That’s how Professor Oya Alpar, Emeritus Professor of Pharmaceutics, University College London, describes the situation with regard to antibiotics. The World Health Organisation warns that antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats to global health, including food security. In this Talking Of Food video, Professor Vivian Moses interviews Professor Alpar on the issue of antibiotics and the food-chain.

Record, life-threatning temperatures in Pakistan; record drought in China affecting water supplies, energy and agriculture; severe drought in Europe causing diminished harvests and river levels low enough to hinder important transport; drought in much of England… the list goes on and on. As this year has shown around the world, climate change is upon us. In 2019, before we, the general public, had really begun to grasp the situation, Professor Vivian Moses proposed a series of discussions on climate change and related issues with experts in relevant fields for Talking of Food.

In the first of Talking of Food's series of interviews and debates on genetically modified (GM) foods, agricultural journalist and author, Diane Montague, interviews Vivian Moses, Visiting Professor of Biotechnology at King's College London, and the resulting discussion sets out what GM is and what the major issues are. It is a fitting introduction to the further discussions.

We are all aware of the threat to existence of climate change. But how is climate change measured; how do we know that sea levels are rising, when we look out to sea and see the waves rolling in, every time different because of wind and weather, and we see the tide ebbing and flowing because of the effect of the moon. To help us understand this, Vivian Moses talked to Ross Reynolds, Associate Professor in the Department of Meteorology, Reading University.

We who live in Britain and buy our food here (only 60% of which is grown in the country, with the rest imported) cannot help but be interested in the current state of UK food production and its future prospects. Phil Bicknell, Head of Food & Farming at the National Farmers Union, fields questions from biotechnologist Vivian Moses representing the inquiring British layman.