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Following the success of last year’s Blood Sweat and T-shirts, the reality TV programme which dropped young fashionistas in Indian garment factories, to experience the working conditions behind their clothes, BBC3 have just announced that they will be transferring the concept to the food supply chain.

Starting on Tuesday 19^th May 2009, Blood Sweat and Takeaways will examine the working conditions in the food industry in South East Asia. Six British fast food fanatics will live and work alongside workers catching, harvesting and processing food products such as tuna and prawns in Indonesia and rice and chicken in Thailand. The TV programme will examine the human cost of the food industry.

The first programme looks at Indonesia’s tuna industry in Bitung on the island of Sulawesi. In the UK, we consume over a billion tins of tuna each year and Bitung’s canneries supply many British supermarkets and food service companies.  The participants 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.

Watch a clip of the fast food fanatics visiting a Tuna factory here

We are excited to see that the BBC is exploring working conditions in the food industry as a follow-up to last year’s series. The title suggests that the focus of the programmes will not be solely on supermarkets, but that it will also target the food service industry.  This is an unusual approach as the British supermarkets are usually the target of these types of expose. The issues of course are widespread in the food industry and are not only located in the supply chains of supermarkets. On reflection, last year’s series covered the issues sensitively and intelligently and we hope this year’s season does the same.

this program really opened my eyes to reality. i would like to be actively involved or take part in any other up coming shows.

The supermarket should be the target because after watching this programme I had serious concerns about food hygiene and food safety despite the programme and factory stating they had strict hygiene procedures.

Some conerns were, all workers having short sleeve shirts, so any cuts or grazes on their arms could lead to product contamination. Most workers did not cover their noses with the face masks. No workers were wearing gloves. The supervisors who are supposed to set an example had the masks under their chins.

Therefore, you have to question what sort of pre-qualification or validation was carried out on this factory before orders were placed.It does seem that the only criteria/condition was a low price.

We are enjoying the show, but I find that Manos is a spoiled rotten brat, as well as an embarrassment.