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Couperwife

Blood, Sweat and Takeways

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did anyone watch this?

 

it was about 6 (or so) Brits who went across to Indonesia and Thailand (I think) and looked at the way that our cheap food is produced.

 

they all started off doing the "oh, yuck, we arent doing that its horrible" and finished with, "oh my word, we are the reasons that these people work in such horrendous conditions"

 

they looked at this chicken portion factory :? 5000 people were working in this factory and sending out more than 150,000 chickens to places including the UK.

 

I picked a number of things up watching this programme, some not so pleasant, one of them is that we need to buy stuff from places like indonesia or Thailand to keep these workers employed, the second is that we need to push fair trade.

 

I assume that it was a life changing experience for all of the people involved in this, and also very informative for the viewers.

 

what did anyone else think.

 

cathy

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Watched the last episode last night kind of by accident. I was surprised by two things in particular:

1) the wages for rice workers being so low that people had to leave the country and go into Bankok just to be able to feed their families (that poor woman who only got to see her 12-month old son twice a year :( )

2) the standard of hygiene in the chicken portion factory. My OH has to visit a chicken factory in a town near where we live in the course of his job and he says the hygiene standards are not nearly as good as in the Bankok one!

 

I always knew fair trade was a good thing but did not try quite as hard as I should to ensure I bought it. So now when shopping everything has to be free-range, organic and fair-trade...finding produce to match those criteria in your standard supermarket is much like looking for a needle in a haystack it seems!

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I always knew fair trade was a good thing but did not try quite as hard as I should to ensure I bought it. So now when shopping everything has to be free-range, organic and fair-trade...finding produce to match those criteria in your standard supermarket is much like looking for a needle in a haystack it seems!

 

Try your local farmers' market - ours has fair trade stalls too. That way we support our local farmers as well as foreign products through fair trade. I buy very little from the supermarket.

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I always knew fair trade was a good thing but did not try quite as hard as I should to ensure I bought it. So now when shopping everything has to be free-range, organic and fair-trade...finding produce to match those criteria in your standard supermarket is much like looking for a needle in a haystack it seems!

 

Try your local farmers' market - ours has fair trade stalls too. That way we support our local farmers as well as foreign products through fair trade. I buy very little from the supermarket.

 

Yes, I buy v little from supermarkets, mainly going to our local farm shop and the farmer's market and getting staples from Suma wholefoods, which sells a lot of organic, fair-trade stuff (e.g., rice etc and the kinds of things that were highlighted in this programme).

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Please do not think badly of Thailand & Thai people. They are extremely clean & friendly loving people. Their are horrors to be found in every country. Do not let this put you off ever visiting! I have never been to a cleaner place than Phuket, Thailand.

However, Goa, India is a different story - the beach gypsies from Kannatika are just like something from Slumdog millionaire. There is so much sad truth in that film. :cry: It is very dirty in areas too.

 

Emma.x

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Please do not think badly of Thailand & Thai people.

 

this programme made it very difficult to think badly of Thailand and Thai people, it was showing that these people will do virtually ANYTHING to send money home to their family. and anything is a rather huge word.

As was posted before, one woman had seen her 12 month old son twice, and lived on very little to enable her family to survive :( she actualy thought it would be at least 7 years before she could see this getting any easier :(

 

there was one scene where a rather manky american was having a go at the brits, saying that the brits were all phoney (dont know what he thought they were doing there) saying that the women were empowered having all the western men after them and the whole of the brit team went on the defence of these women, I think part of the crew stepped in to stop a big street fight happening, it was :twisted::twisted::twisted:

 

anyway, if you get chance, watch it

 

cathy

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We watched the whole series. Very thought provoking and lovely hard working people.

 

I agree that the standards of cleanliness was exceptional, however I still cannot understand why there is any need for this country to import. The company my OH catches chickens for slaughter 135,000 chickens a day for UK supermarkets :shock: ......where on earth does all this chicken go??

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