Tuesday 9 September, 9.30pm
The Big Food Fight: Animal Pharm sees how genetic engineering, cloning and stem cell research are revolutionising the world. Every day the boundaries of understanding are being pushed back, and science fiction is becoming science fact. This two-part series brings these shocking innovations to the screen.
Hosts Giles Coren and Olivia Judson couldn't be at further apart on what they think about the new sciences. Biologist Judson is a strong supporter of genetic engineering, she believes it opens a world of wonder.
"I find genetic engineering amazing. It's a new frontier of science that has the possibility of transforming all of our lives. For me genetic engineering isn't so much frightening as inspiring."
Food journalist Coren disagrees. Passionate about organic farming he says, "As far as I'm concerned, when it comes to feeding the planet, nature has done a pretty good job of it. So when I hear about the brave new world of genetic engineering and the Franken-food that it produces, it strikes me as completely pointless, and to be honest, very scary."
The first programme explores how science is changing the food people eat with selective breeding. From double-muscled bulls to featherless chickens, this is breeding on a whole new level.
Judson believes people shouldn't be afraid of changing science. She says farmers have been interfering with nature for thousands of years, developing food as it is today. Judson says she can imagine most people will look at the featherless chickens and find them revolting, but she can see the benefits. "They are not the first animal to have their natural covering removed. Look at pigs, in the wild boar are furry, and even we humans were once apes, entirely covered in hair. Perhaps they are not as weird as they first seem."
Stepping into the world of transgenics, viewers see rabbits with a jellyfish gene in their DNA (they glow in the dark), and salmon engineered to grow four times faster than normal. Meet the all-new Enviropigs, which carry a man-made gene that makes their manure environmentally friendly, and check out genetically modified 'golden rice', which, according to its creators, could save millions of lives in the developing world. It also enters the world of cloning, where endless copies of an organism can be made, like a biological photocopier. Witness the process of cloning in action, and meet Charmayne James, the $1million cowgirl, who's cloned her legendary horse, Scamper.
While Judson says she would much rather eat an organism that has been genetically modified to grow fast than one that has been injected with hormones to grow fast. She says there is nothing mystical about a gene, "We know what it is, we can describe it, we can build them, there is nothing mysterious and all it does is contain the instruction for making a protein - you add one, you take one away, so what?".
Coren disagrees, he says understanding how it works, to then start changing and meddling with it, is another step. Without knowing what the long-term dangers could be, he is uncomfortable with the process.
Part-two of Animal Pharm, on The Big Food Fight next week, looks at how bio-technology is changing the world of medicine and how genetic science is pushing back the frontiers of medicine. See the cows that are milked for their blood; a flock of sheep with humanised organs; mice who can regenerate themselves; and other ground-breaking investigations.
