25/06/20 - Rethink: Ertharin Cousin on the cracks in our food systems

Farming Today

• Episode: 25/06/20 - Rethink: Ertharin Cousin on the cracks in our food systems
• Website: Farming Today
• Feed URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qj8q/episodes/downloads.rss
• Duration: 00:13:27
• Published: 2020-06-25 07:00

Ertharin Cousin, Distinguished Fellow at Chicago Council on Global Affairs in Food Security and the Environment and a visiting scholar at Stanford University tells Charlotte Smith how coronavirus has exposed the cracks in our food systems, as part of BBC Radio's Rethink Week. She argues that more regional processing would help the U.K feed itself more efficiently and more easily plug the gaps in supply and demand. Waitrose have said it won’t stock imported foods produced to lower standards in future, and the Chief Executive James Bailey tells Charlotte why he thinks he has their customers' backing for the move. There have been outbreaks of coronavirus at meat processing plants in Wales and West Yorkshire, but the British Poultry Council says its unfair to portray meat processing plants as virus epicentres. Producer: Toby Field