General Chat

Takeaways' last night BBC 3...

from bbc "When it comes to food, we are spoilt for choice. From top class restaurants to low cost supermarkets, we take it for granted that we can buy whatever food we want, whenever we want it.

But would we feel the same if we knew the human cost of food production?

Six typical young British food consumers go to live and work alongside the millions of people in south east Asia's food production industries. They must catch, harvest and process food products that we eat every day, seeing behind the scenes of the tuna, prawns, rice and chicken industries for the very first time.

They eat, sleep and live with food workers in the poorest regions of Indonesia and Thailand, surviving on the same wages. The average wage for food workers here is around 3 pounds a day.

To begin with, the Brits tackle Indonesia's tuna industry in Bitung on the island of Sulawesi. In the UK, we consume over a billion tins of tuna a year and Bitung's canneries supply to many British supermarkets and sandwich chains.

The Brits live with tuna workers in basic communities, endure 90-degree heat in the canneries and struggle with the harsh realities of life on a traditional wooden tuna boat in the western Pacific. The extreme conditions affect them all in many different ways, as do the hand to mouth existence of the workers they live with."

Don't eat tuna personally, but will watch the other programmes with interest... My son earns more per hour on his paper round than these people do, he watched with me. The lady supervising ses her children once a week as she can't afford to get a house for them all, the earnings were equivalent to £2 a day approx...it costs her nearly £1 to go and see them.

Yes Rambling Rose, was going to put a thread up about this. It was terrible and absolutely disgusting, both for the people who worked there and the way the fish were caught and handled, and has put me off tuna for life. In fact, this morning OH put the two tins in the fridge into the dustbin. Next week it is about prawns, and then rice. Will be watching with interest.
Ooh horrible
Julai in Derbyshire

Julia, such a hard life and for so little. And yet , playing devils advocate to an extent, better to earn a meagre wage than none at all? each of us would do it I would guess (and worse) to feed our families.As one of the Brits there said, I will try harder to buy fairtrade to make sure the workers get a decent wage and conditions.


By the end of the series your food cupboard may be missing rice and prawns as well as the tuna!

Rose xx

Rambling Rose, how I agree with you., and I too try to buy fair trade products where I can. Yes, I have to agree, possibly prawns and rice will have to go also, said she getting rid of the half dozen bags in the freezer.
I think world forces are dictating what foods we eat, eg the supermarket bosses, and at what cost to the people who have to catch/grow these commodities for us. See my thread yesterday about Tesco and seasonal food. All these things coming to light, are making me have a more discerning pallete
Julia in Derbyshire