Blood, Sweat and Takeaways

If any of you actually watched the BBC programme 'Blood, Sweat and Takeaways', you can't deny that it's a bloody good programme.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00kmtb1/Blood_Sweat_and_Takeaways_Tuna/

Basically, 6 Brits who come from posh, pampered, well-taken-care-of lives were sent to Asia to find out where their supermarket food comes from. In the first episode they were taken to Indonesia and had to work in a tuna factory. There, they were welcomed to the brutal truth of how difficult it is for workers to process tuna for the benefit of the world's tuna consumer market. Gutting, skinning, chopping were some of the monotonous tasks they had to do, standing for 8 hours everyday in line with the factory's guidelines. At the end of the day if they were successful, they were each paid a meagre wage of £2 a day. They had to also live with these workers and experience the shabby conditions of reality.

In the second episode, they were taken to a prawn farming village in another part of Indonesia. They were thrown into working extremes as they hauled heavy clayey rocks to form barriers along the prawn ponds; to prevent the tide and rain from taking the preciously-bred prawns out to sea. It was really tough and a reality check for most of them, how much effort it takes to actually cater enough food to the Western world.

In the third episode, they went over to Thailand to witness the back-breaking process of cultivating rice in the fields. The twist was that they had to also pay their own rent and whatever little wage they earned they had to also use to buy their own food. That was really really tough for them as they did not perform up to standards and had half their wages docked on the first day. They went hungry for a couple of days, just eating bananas and bread. It was truly painful to see how tough it was for them, let alone the local people who work so hard and still struggle 'at the bottom of the food chain'.

In the fourth and final episode, the Brits moved from the rice fields into the heart of Thailand - Bangkok - where they experienced being in the biggest slums in the city. The locals who had to move over because of the rice season ending in the villages, engaged in dismembering fish parts for factory sale. Of course the group got involved in the work, albeit after a guilty conscience of leaving one member behind to do the work and them spending a night at a 4-star hotel instead. After that they were brought to the chicken factory that processes a whopping 145,000 chickens a day through hanging, killing, skinning, gutting, etc. The group had an opportunity to get their hands busy as well.

When night fell, they visited the red light district in Bangkok, and got a shock at how many women have been forced into the trade, for the sole reason of supporting their families who live in the villages. Nobody wants to be there really.

Then to make things more exciting, an American man butted his fat nose into the conversation they were having with a local woman, and without knowing what the programme was about and what the Brits were doing, called them all "phonies" in all his self-righteousness. It was shocking to see how shallow the American was without even empathising with or understanding first what it was all about. No offence, but it is ALWAYS the Americans isn't it, sad to say. They live in a well where they can only see their patch of blue sky, and should really get some common sense into their frikin heads, to be more aware of the world around them before they start shouting their nonsense and looking like an asshole to the world.

I must say this has been a truly enlightening programme. I'm glad I had the chance to watch it and be more aware of fair trade and how the food industry affects everything. If there was a chance to make better the lives of these workers, we should and we would!