Blood, Sweat and Takeaways: Tuna

/ Thursday, May 21 /



After watching this BBC documentary, I don't believe I can ever complain again for some time....


Information about the show:

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.








There is a good Daily Mail article on this as well
 
Copyright © Gaurav Monga