CHEAP FOOD, BUT AT WHAT COST?

Liverpool Echo, 8 May 1979

FACTORY farming may mean cheap food but are we paying too high a price for this benefit in terms of health?
   That's the alarming question tackled by It Shouldn't Happen to a Pig (BBC-2, 8.10) which launches a new series of Brass Tacks debates.
   With poultry, pigs and beef being reared in increasingly crowded conditions that foster large-scale disease, the use of antibiotics is spreading.
   And with many modern diseases becoming resistant to

treatment, the bacteria that cause salmonella, typhoid and meningitis are able to affect the human consumer.
   Viewers who wish to have their say on this cheap meat versus safe meat debate can join in by ringing their local BBC radio stations - it's part of an experiment to get the audience at home contributing to the new Brass Tacks series.
   The follow-up programme will be called Return Call and goes out next Monday.