Underhand Tactics: Food Globalisation

Who’s paying the real price for the cheap food in our supermarkets? What is the social cost of discount food? We investigate the conditions under which some of our common staples – bananas, vegetables and fish – are produced.

In Italy – at the heart of democratic and “human right compliant” European Union – illegal workers from sub-Saharan Africa live in appalling conditions, working long hours under the control of omnipotent “caporalatos”. In Cameroon, the banana industry stands accused of appropriating land, polluting the environment and bribing local politicians. Meanwhile in Guinea, fish stocks are plundered by foreign fleets. The African workers on these ships are often exploited and abused.

As numerous scandals call on more transparency from the food industry, this investigation discloses how complex the food supply chain is. A complexity made of multiple middle men that hide the shameful reality of human exploitation.