Farming Today

08/10/24 - Cell-cultivated protein, natural flood management, Dartmoor wild camping

More than a million pounds is being given by the Government to the Food Standards Agency, to decide what needs to be put in place to ensure new, "cell-cultivated" foodstuffs will be safe to eat. We hear from the FSA's Chief Scientific Advisor.

The long-running case about whether the public can 'wild camp' on Dartmoor, will be heard in the Supreme Court, where a final determination will be made. The dispute is between Dartmoor National Park and landowners Alexander and Diana Darwall, who own Stall Moor common on south-west Dartmoor.

It's one year since the launch of the Welsh Government's Natural Flood Management Accelerator programme - a 2-year, £4.6 million investment in nature-based solutions to reduce flooding. We visit one of the 23 projects.

And people living in a small coastal community near Robin's Hood Bay in North Yorkshire say they fear being cut off this winter, after a landslip caused the closure of the only road in and out of their village. It's not yet known when the road will be fixed. In the meantime the council has set up an alternative route - a 12 mile diversion via a former railway line - but, locals say it's unsuitable and potentially unsafe during the winter months.

Presented by Anna Hill Produced by Heather Simons

Broadcast on:: 08 Oct 2024
Audio Format:: other

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming here. Give it a try at midmobile.com/switch, whatever you're ready. $45 up from payment equivalent to $15 per month, new customers on first three month plan only, taxes and fees extra, speeds lower above 40 gigabytes of CD-Tails. Hey, I hear you think podcasts are all about true crime, huh? Well, wise guy, the iHeart Radio app's got all kinds of podcasts. We got stuff you should know and stuff they don't want you to know. We got stuff you should know and stuff they don't want you to know. We got stuff you should know and stuff they don't want you to know. We got stuff you should know and stuff they don't want you to know. We got stuff you should know and stuff they don't want you to know. We got stuff you should know and stuff they don't want you to know. We got stuff you should know and stuff they don't want you to know. We got Bobby Bones, Big Boy and Lou Lader. We got SpongeBob, binge pants and exotic erotic story time. We got doe boys, two dudes in the kitchen, green eggs and Dan. Hey, we got Elf Quest. We got podcasts for everything on the iHeart Radio app for free. If you don't download that, well, that's not just a true crime, my friend. That's criminal. BBC sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hello, it's Anna Hill here with the Farming Today podcast. This time, managing flood defences with nature in Wales. The Supreme Court is due to make final decision whether to allow wild camping on Dartmoor and artificial meat and dairy, making sure new foods are safe for us to eat. There are lots of unknowns about the types of media you grow the cells in, the kind of chemicals you might have to use to turn them into muscle or fat cells, and the processes you use afterwards to turn those single cells into something that looks more like the kind of food that consumers will want to eat. We'll have more from the Food Standards Agency later. First, people living in a small coastal community near Robin's Hood Bay in North Yorkshire say they fear being cut off this winter after a land slip caused the closure of the only road in and out of their village. It's not yet known when the road will be fixed. In the meantime, the Council has set up an alternative route, a 12-mile diversion via a former railway line. But locals say it's unsuitable and potentially unsafe during the winter months. BBC Look North's Phil Bodmer has been to the village and met residents, including Monica and David Bose. The road has closed, so we've got no access on a traditional road to school, to shops, to GP surgery. The normal everyday things that people would probably take for granted. The alternative we've been given is a dish use railway line, which is, we don't think it's safe, particularly not safe in the winter, you're 600 feet up here. And once the weather turns, that isn't an alternative, so we'd like the road fixed. As you can see, there's a significant cracks in the road and half of it actually has pretty much gone away. We need to be fixed before winter sets. If it's not going to happen, my children will not get to school. We will not get groceries and we will look in at community being totally cut off. Well, there is a lengthy diversion in place. It's along the former Whitby to Scarborough Railway line, which is now a cinder track. But local residents say they're concerned that with winter coming on, weather conditions will worsen, and this too, this cinder track, which is really narrow in places, will effectively become impossible as well. My big concern is my husband had a heart attack in January, and it was a 999 ambulance job to James Cook in Middlesbrough. Margaret and Leslie Atkinson have lived here for more than 40 years, but they say the road closure is having a major impact on their lives. I don't know whether an ambulance now would find us and come along the railway track the time it would take. And I worry about other neighbours. We've got a Lady 92, another 187. So that health is a big thing for me, and just getting out to do the shopping every day. North Yorkshire Council says they've closed the road to ensure public safety and appreciate the inconvenience it's having. They will be carrying out localised repairs to the cinder track to ensure local access is maintained. They say there's regular contact with local residents, and they will provide updates when they can. Phil Bobmore reporting. The long-running case about whether the public and wild camp on Dartmoor will be heard today in the Supreme Court, where a final determination will be made. The dispute is between Dartmoor National Park and land owners Alexandra and Diana Darwell, who own Stalmore Common on Southwest Dartmoor. Martin Oates, political editor for BBC Southwest, has been following this story. Well, Dartmoor is the only place in England where you are legally allowed to wild camp. Winding back a couple of years, this was challenged by one of Dartmoor's biggest landowners in the courts. Initially, the court agreed with him and said there is no legal right to wild camp. That was then appealed. The appeal court took the opposite view. This all hinges on interpretation of the Dartmoor Commons Act of 1985 and what open air recreation is defined as. The first court said it didn't include camping, the appeal court says yes, it does include camping. This appeal to the Supreme Court today is to get a final ruling. And so how binding will that decision be? That will be it, will it? Absolutely. Under the English legal system, the judges interpret the law. And once you get to the Supreme Court, you run out of people to interpret it. So yes, their judgement will be the definitive judgement as to what this piece of legislation means and whether it legally allows wild camping. And what about the wider political backdrop? What could the fallout be from this? Well, this is really interesting because when this blew up a couple of years ago, Labour then in opposition said, look, if the courts ruled that there's no legal right, currently will introduce one. And in fact, we'll go further than that. We'll allow wild camping in the other national parks in England. The question is whether that is something they're still committed to. Now, I contacted the Defra Press office to try to establish that. And they haven't come back to me with an answer yet. I think there must be a question mark over it, not least because Labour were also at the same time talking about a massive expansion of the right to Rome along the model of the right to Rome that exists in Scotland. Now, last autumn, the party decided to drop that. Now, some MPs were talking about wild camping rights in the same breath or associating it with right to Rome legislation. So it remains to be seen whether Labour are still likely to say, look, if the Supreme Court rules there is currently no legal right to wild camp on Dartmoor, we will bring one in. BBC Southwest political editor Martin Oates, and since we recorded that, Defra has told us it will be considering whether any changes are required to the current right to Rome regime in due course. After a record-breaking year of rainfall across many parts of the UK, all week we're looking into different aspects of water management. It's one year since the launch of the Welsh government's Natural Flood Management Accelerator Program, a two-year, 4.6-million-pound investment in nature-based solutions to reduce flooding. Sarah Moore has been to see one of the projects covering the Y Valley and Vale of Osk. Countless streams flow down into the River Usk, one of Wales' longest rivers. How often do you see it like this? It'll run like this pretty much all winter now. You can see it's very clear. At the bottom of the Usk Valley, the village of Land Gatwick lies just across the river from Crick Howl. Some properties here often get flooded, though not park farm, a 200-acre sheep and cattle farm. The soil type here is quite free draining, but like with the rain we've had the last few days, the streams impact the place has really risen. Will Land and his partner are the tenant farmers here. With the agreement of the landlords and through the Y and Usk Foundation soil project, funded by Paris County Council and the Welsh government, Will is doing three things to try and improve water infiltration and reduce water runoff across this land. We decided to do the aeration and the rotational grazing and then cover crops. I guess with cows trampling over the land all the time, compaction can be quite a problem. Yes. You think, oh, there's no heavy machinery traveling it, but yeah, you take a cow or a sheep walking over it day after day. It's amazing what compaction you do get. That is why we've done the aeration. The second thing you mentioned was rotational grazing, right? We've got a built-in figure field out here and we've electrified it into six paddocks of about 45 acres. So I've got 20 cattle and they'll rotate around every week to 10 days so that allows the grass to grow back. Utilizer fertilizer in the ground, get stronger roots and also you're not poaching the ground like you would be if they're running the lot all the time. Each patch of grass would have about a five-week period of resting. Yes, yeah, yeah, which is ideal. It just allows it to grow back. And then the third one was the cover crops. Yes. So this is an area of land that wouldn't normally have a crop on it. You can see over there in the distance it would be left like that all winter and yeah, heavy rain on that. You're just washing that top so all the way where your nitrogen is and all your nutrients is. So you've essentially planted a crop for ground cover then so you don't get the runoff. There's quite a lot of flooding, flowing down in the valley. And I think the ground is right at the moment, it's not really the same. Using hydrological modeling, the Wyandusk Foundation is working with nine landowners on the soil project. Quite close to our farm is a small river called the Onivark and this was quite significant in the flooding that occurred. By the bridge into Crickel in 2020, that made a lot of news headlines. A little further uphill on land which both views across the valley to the Black Mountains, George Smith owns a smaller 20 acre plot of the kind of land which is harder to farm and he has just ten sheep. Sheep aren't really viable on the amount of land we've got. So in the past few years we've decided to look at rewilding and see how we can improve things for the community. We've fenced in some areas with the intention of planting some willow beds across the flow lines. And willow in a damp area grows quite quickly. And the idea being that the roots would soak up. Yeah, the roots were soaking up, it's very fast growing and it's quite water hungry as well. Further down, about 20 years ago I did plant some more trees and that's made a massive difference I've noticed when I walk through the woodland. So it's already having an effect there. The section of our land where I'm planting the willow beds, it's redundant land anyway so all I'm doing is improving it. And an additional benefit is that I've got to buy a mass boiler which I feel from wood from our existing plantation. But also I can get quite a lot of wood harvested from the willow plantation in a few years time as well. So hopefully it'll be a benefit to everyone. George Smith in the Vale of Osk. Might seem lab grown burgers are a long way off but they could be on the menu sooner than you think. More than a million pounds is being given by the government to the Food Standards Agency to decide what needs to be put in place to ensure new cell cultivated foodstuffs will be safe to eat. Professor Robin May is Chief Scientific Advisor at the Food Standards Agency. He told me companies around the world are working on artificial meat and dairy products for human consumption. There's a really wide range of products that are at varying stages in the pipeline globally actually. So at one end you have things that are relatively straightforward scientifically. So for example some of the milk substitutes in which you have cells that are producing one or two proteins and producing therefore a liquid that looks and tastes similar to milk. At the other end of the extreme you have really complicated three dimensional structures created from different cell types. And they range from things like burgers and steaks through flagra, fish substitutes, eel substitutes are in development all around the world. Do we know how it works and how safe it is? That's one of the reasons why today we've been announcing this investment specifically to develop a regulatory regime that's appropriate for these products. Because they are very different to anything we've eaten before. And there are lots of unknowns about the types of media you grow the cells in, the kind of chemicals you might have to use to turn them into muscle or fat cells. And the process is you use afterwards to turn those single cells into something that looks more like the kind of food that consumers will want to eat. And so for us as a regulator there are lots of kind of exciting science questions, interesting science questions, but also really important that we get these decisions right about safety before we authorize any of these products. There is a bit of a push pull there, there isn't there as you mentioned you know between regulation and safety and food companies wanting to release a new product as quickly as possible. We are very clear that for us safety is the most critical feature and so we look very very cautiously at that and we're certainly not going to speed anything along any way that kind of reduces that confidence in the safety of the product. But I think it's also probably important to say that no company wants to have a product that is dangerous or has a health risk associated with it. So actually I think we're all on the same page here. You're talking about muscles and fat, are these end products the same as the food we eat now, or are they novel, are they absolutely different from what we eat now. So they're sort of both Anna, so obviously if you're a company in this space, what you're typically aiming to do is create a product that is very similar perhaps indistinguishable from a traditional product that we now so a fillet steak that looks and tastes and feels like a fillet steak. So in that sense they are very very familiar in the sense of the kind of science and innovation that produces them they are completely different because these are cells grown in large fermenter vats for example, they might be then induced using chemical or physical signals to clump together and form muscle fibers or fat tissues in order to reconstitute that kind of mouth feel you get with a classical steak. Is there a potential for this to disrupt the real meat market? Yeah I think it's a very interesting question and one that's hard to predict how consumers will see this and how they will respond to it. I think at the moment most companies are very clear that they are not aiming to totally replace the meat market far from it. What they're aiming to do is to offer an alternative to consumers. It's also important to point out that some of the companies at least initially are looking to combine this with meat. So for example to have classical meat and a cell cultivated product in a single entity. I wonder if he means a shepherd's pie. Professor Robin May there from the Food Standards Agency. That's it from us, I'm Anna Hill, the producer is Heather Simons. Farming today is a BBC audio Bristol production. Hey, I hear you think podcasts are all about true crime huh? Well wise guy, the iHeartRadio app's got all kinds of podcasts. We got stuff you should know and stuff they don't want you to know. We got Bobby Bones, Big Boy and Lou Lader. We got SpongeBob, binge pants and exotic erotic story time. We got doe boys, two dudes in the kitchen, green eggs and Dan. Hey, we got Elf Quest. We got podcasts for everything on the iHeartRadio app for free. If you don't download that, well, that's not just a true crime my friend. And that's criminal.