Blood, Sweat and Takeaways often felt like a programme with two stories: one which focussed on how the British visitors were able to relate to the native workers: make friends, empathise and build respect; and another which focussed on their reaction against the unfamiliar living and working conditions: disgust, shock, physical revulsion.  Seeing the latter was not pleasant, where peoples’ daily lived reality is reduced to a device for shock factor TV.  However it is perhaps these raw reactions that bring home the vast inequalities to be found in the history of a tin of tuna.

Watching the Brits work and live with the workers allowed the programme to explore some of the impacts that the food supply chain has on people’s lives.  From the positives: a regular source of income, funding for children’s education, to the negatives: the splitting of families, poor living conditions and low wages.  Stacey’s view that ‘no-one should have to make such huge sacrifices for Western benefit’ collides head-on with James’ recognition that ‘if we didn’t have the 140,000 chickens coming through a day we wouldn’t be employing those 5000 people… wouldn’t have jobs, wouldn’t be able support a family…’ 

Clearly there are no easy answers; however at Impactt we believe that where the actions of retailers/brands directly impact on the lives and communities of workers/growers in developing countries there is both a great deal of responsibility but also potential for effecting positive change.  To this end Impactt is working towards enabling buyers to make ‘pro-development’ decisions.

Throughout the series the Brits’ realised that by virtue of the opportunities they had access to during their lives they have a myriad of choices unavailable to the workers they encountered.  In the Western context we are perhaps spoilt for choice but with an awareness of the broad-reaching power of our purchasing decisions we can also be empowered by it.   We watch as Josh takes on new shopping choices with gusto; he dips into a strangers shopping basket pulling out a banana like a game show host and asks: ‘are these Fairtrade bananas?’  The final episode attracted 546,000 viewers, 1/3 of which were between 16 and 34 years old, the fact that these issues captured the interest of a young demographic is exciting and begs the question, what next?  May this be a first step for responsible purchasing decisions; from consumers all the way up to the brands.

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 week the young fashionistas found themselves in the slums of Dharavi in Mumbai, where amongst the warren of backstreets and open sewers they saw factories making and embroidering clothes for the UK and US market. In these small backrooms, workers worked from 8am – 10pm in dangerous and unhygienic conditions. The workers were earning about £3.20 a day.

The group were horrified at the low levels of health and safety in the factories.  Stacey, a 20 year old shop assistant from Luton, expressed her horror at the conditions, saying: “a safe working environment, where you’re not going to die of disease is not a lot to ask for.”

As they came to terms with the working environment, and saw how critical these jobs were to workers (who were earning twice the average wage of cotton pickers), they started to change their minds about the factories, realising that there was little point in naming and shaming companies sourcing from these factories, since this would mean the workers might lose their jobs.  As Richard, a 24 year old advertising executive comments: 

“We are not really doing anything wrong as a UK consumer.  If anything we are being a massive help to these guys, because if it wasn’t for us buying their clothes then as people keep pointing out, these guys wouldn’t have a job and if we think that the conditions here are bad now, you wait ‘til all the UK consumers revolt and turn around and say ‘actually we’re not going to buy any clothes from India anymore because we’re not happy with the conditions’ you wait to see what the conditions are like in a year.”

The group discovered that one of the biggest problems in Dharavi, is the use of child labour in the garment industry.  The girls interviewed one of their fellow workers in the factory who had been working in the factory since he was 10.  They joined Satish, an enforcement officer with an NGO working to eliminate child labour in the garment industry.  In one factory they found one young boy hiding behind a loom, he looked no older than 13.  Satish and the girls questioned the boy about his age, and why he was in the factory, as he looked on terrified.  It powerfully demonstrated the importance of dealing with the issue of child labour in a very sensitive manner.  Impactt has developed a series of child labour guidelines which are currently being reviewed in consultation with stakeholders.

The series finished with a visit to a school set up for rescued child labourers, where the children’s young age and vulnerability was starkly evident. 

At the end of this controversial and challenging series, we were extremely pleased to see that some serious issues were raised and difficult questions posed.  The group left India with a better idea of why workers were willing to put up with such poor working conditions and why children are so commonly forced to work.

We thought we should leave the last word to Tara, a budding fashion designer.

“The dilemma that I’ve got is that I really can’t condone the conditions of some of the factories that we’ve visited but I can’t really condemn them because they are providing people with jobs and with roofs over their heads.”