Business Daily

Would you feel better tucking into a juicy steak knowing that the cow it comes from is still happily living out its life in a field somewhere? Biotechnology could make that possible.

Manuela Saragosa hears from Shannon Falconer at pet food maker Because Animals, who grows real meat in a lab. Jon McIntyre at Motif FoodWorks explains how new technology has made his plant-based products tastier. We also hear from Tony Seba at the think tank, Rethink X. He believes we'll be designing food like software in the future.

Producer: Laurence Knight.

(Picture: Raw meat in a lab petri dish. Credit: Getty Images)

Business Weekly hears from the industry that brings viruses back from the dead. The world of biotechnology is rapidly evolving - it recreates the stuff we can’t necessarily touch and feel, like smells and bacteria. Can it help contain future pandemics? Manuela Saragosa explores the risks and opportunities. We also head backstage at the theatre - many shows are having to come up with novel ways to perform productions, but are they able to sustain a business under social distancing rules? Rob Young speaks to the artistic director of the world famous Royal Albert Hall in London’s West End about their plans to ensure shows carry on.

Can spider silk and grasshopper rubber, brewed by vats of genetically modified microbes, wean us off our addiction to oil-based plastics?

Manuela Saragosa explores what sounds like an environmentalist sci-fi utopia. She speaks to Daniel Meyer, head of corporate planning at Spiber, a Japanese company that is already trying to commercialise clothes and car parts made of synthetic spider silk. Meanwhile Christophe Schilling, chief executive of California-based Genomatica, is using a similar biotechnology to manufacture good old-fashioned nylon.

But there is one potential problem: The microbes that make these fantastic new materials need to be fed lots and lots of sugar - but where will it all come from? Agnieszka Brandt-Talbot of Imperial College in London thinks she has an answer, and it involves that most sugary of substances - wood.

Producer: Laurence Knight

(Picture: Close up of a Furrow Spider on its web in a Pennsylvania meadow in summer; Credit: Cwieders/Getty Images)

Genetically modified microbes could herald a new industrial revolution - but the technology also poses new dangers.

Manuela Saragosa speaks to someone who used it to recreate the horsepox virus - a close cousin of smallpox - from scratch three years ago. Virologist David Evans explains why he did it, and what aspects of this rapidly evolving technology worry him most.

One of the companies on the cutting edge is Boston-based Ginkgo Bioworks. It redesigns the DNA of bacteria and yeast in order to create everything from perfumes to fertilisers. Ginkgo's Patrick Boyle tells Manuela what they are doing to ensure that the microbes and DNA they create remain harmless.

Producer: Laurence Knight

(Picture: Anonymous vial containing a clear liquid; Credit: MirageC/Getty Images)

After several countries banned alcohol as part of their lockdown measures, we ask if prohibition ever works?

Ed Butler reports from South Africa, where a recent ban on alcohol was welcomed by some healthcare professionals and those fighting violence in the country. Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron and University of California criminologist Emily Owens discuss whether limits on alcohol are ever really effective.

(Photo: A man takes beers from a fridge inside a liquor shop in Soweto, Johannesburg, on June 1, 2020; Credit: Getty Images)

Journalist Peter Geoghegan describes the many ways in which private money is corrupting democratic politics, encouraging chaos and fuelling public cynicism.

In an extended interview with the BBC's Ed Butler, the Irish author and broadcaster explains a Brexit campaign advert that he happened to come across in a local newspaper while visiting the city of Sunderland in the north of England led him to investigate where the money funding the Leave campaign was coming from. It led him to explore how business and political interests - often from foreign countries - were able over decades to shift the political discourse in Western liberal democracies in their favour.

(Picture: US flag made out of one dollar bills; Credit: Matt Anderson Photography/Getty Images)

Many women feel they are ignored by the larger economy after they reach a certain age, and some of them aren't willing to accept that.

Tamasin Ford speaks to Bonnie Marcus, host of the Badass Women at Any Age podcast, who explains how women over 60 can deal with the double-whammy of sexism and ageism in business. Meanwhile, Tricia Cusden tells us about how she started up the cosmetics retailer Look Fabulous Forever - a business run by and for women in their older years. And Ruth Saunders, author of Female Entrepreneurs: The Secrets of Their Success, explains why the larger business community would be smart to think more about older women in the economy.

Producer: Frey Lindsay

(Picture: Older woman looking fabulous; Credit: Getty Images)

As evidence mounts that Chinese authorities are continuing to incarcerate Uighur Muslims in work camps in the North West of the country we discuss the steps foreign companies should be taking to ensure their businesses don’t benefit from enforced labour.

Plus, as facemarks become compulsory in shared workplaces in France we hear from a top health expert who says mask wearing should be non-negotiable.

Business weekly is presented by Lucy Burton and produced by Clare Williamson.

(Image: T-shirts hanging on a garment rail, Image credit: Getty Images)

Many Africans are buying Chinese-made smartphones that steal their information. Investigations have shown that the cheap devices are pre-installed with a kind of malware that drains the data allowance and in some cases signs the user up to subscription services without their knowledge. Nathan Collier, from security firm Malwarebytes explains how it works. But David Li of Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab says he's not convinced Chinese manufacturers are to blame for the problem. Meanwhile, with data literacy a big problem in Africa, Kenneth Adu-Amanfoh, Executive Director of ACDRO in Ghana says better consumer education is needed.

(Picture: A woman on her phone in Nigeria. Picture credit: Getty Images)

Some universities fear they have become too financially dependent on fee-paying Chinese students - and thanks to Covid-19, many of them are staying away this year.

Salvatore Babones, an associate professor at the University of Sydney, says Australia is particularly vulnerable to this, while Vivienne Stern of Universities UK says it’s just one of a number of serious concerns for UK and US universities. We also hear from Chinese students already in the UK about whether they think it’s worth continuing.

(Picture: An empty classroom at an Italian University; Credit: Getty Images)