環(huán)球英語—937:Producing Food

Voice 1
Welcome to Spotlight. I'm Ryan Geertsma.
Voice 2
And I'm Robin Basselin. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand, no matter where in the world they live.
Voice 1
Do you know where your food comes from? Or the process it goes through to get to you?
Voice 2
Do you know how many people are involved in harvesting it? Or what they do to get it ready for the store where you bought it? In today's world, many people buy their food in large stores - supermarkets. The experience of buying food is very distant from producing food. Often, people do not think about where their food comes from.
Voice 1
Stacey is a student in the United Kingdom. In May of 2009, she wrote a story for the BBC News website. It was about a trip she took to South-East Asia with five other people. At the beginning of the story she explains what her trip was about.
Voice 3
"A lot of the low cost food we eat in the United Kingdom comes from South East Asia. There it is harvested and processed before being placed in supermarkets here. We do not even need to think about how it got here."
Voice 2
There are farms all over the world. Some of these farms provide food for people locally. But other farms only produce one kind of food in large amounts. These kinds of farms are often owned by large companies. These companies provide that product to food stores internationally.
Voice 1
This kind of production lets the company produce more food at a lower cost. They can then sell the food in stores at a lower cost. But what effects does mass production have on the people who work for those companies?
Voice 2
Stacey went on her trip to find out. She went to South East Asia to experience the working conditions of the people who produce large amounts of food. The same foods she buys for a low cost - rice, tuna fish, and shell fish such as prawns.
Voice 1
At each of the places Stacey went, the food producers welcomed her. She writes,
Voice 3
"What is important to the factory owners is that the food quality is high. It meets the demanding requirements set by the European Union. So they had nothing to hide. And the wages they pay their workers are the legal minimum wages. So again they have nothing to hide."
Voice 2
Stacey worked in the same conditions as the food workers. And she made the same amount of money. The first place she worked produced cans of tuna fish. There she had to separate the meat of the fish from the parts that would not be used.
Voice 3
"They showed us where we would work. Then we were given a whole cooked fish. We had to open the fish, take out the bones, and remove all the other organs. The work was very particular. You could not waste a single piece of the meat. Only the red meat could be removed. If you lost any white meat, you were shouted at. That happened to us a lot."
Voice 1
After Stacey described the work she did at the factory, she described the conditions. It was very hot where they worked. The heat even caused sickness in another person on the trip. She also writes that the smell was extremely strong. The long hours of work make these conditions very difficult. Stacey was paid for her work at the end of the day. Unfortunately, her wages were not enough to buy food. All she could buy was a bar of chocolate.
Voice 2
The working conditions Stacey experienced were difficult. But they are not illegal. Food companies are careful to keep the laws. But there are times when companies find ways to go around the laws. They find ways to produce large amounts of food for low costs.
Voice 1
For example there is a tea factory in Karachi, Pakistan. This factory has no name. There is no sign on the building that says what company runs it. There are no permanent workers at this factory either. Yet, every day, there is tea produced at this factory.
Voice 2
This tea is produced by short-term workers. The company employs them for a short time. Then when that time is over, the company employs the worker again for a new amount of time. There are more laws about employing long-term workers. Companies usually need to provide long-term workers with medical care. Some laws require companies to pay long-term workers higher wages. So by employing short-term workers, the company saves money. This helps them to sell their tea at a low cost.
Voice 1
But many of these short-term workers have been doing the same job at this factory for many years. So they are more like long-term workers. But because the company employs them for short-terms, these workers do not receive the same rights or protection from the laws that long-term workers receive.
Voice 2
For these workers, there is no promise of work for another day. They arrive for work each morning and hope they will work. This makes it very difficult for the workers' families. There usually is not enough money to send the children to school. Often there is not even enough money to eat two times a day.
Voice 1
Stories like Stacey's and the Factory without a name raise issues for people far away, who buy the food. A person can decide to buy a low cost food in one country. But that decision will affect the lives of all the workers involved in getting that food to the store.
Voice 2
Considering worker's rights can make buying food emotionally difficult. Stacey says she still buys foods like rice and tuna fish. She knows that the quality of the food is good. But now she thinks about the quality of the food workers lives.
Voice 3
"I still want to support the wonderful people we met in South-East Asia. But by buying that food I am supporting the system that I do not agree with - a system which shows little respect for worker's rights."
Voice 1
There is not an easy answer to this problem. If people refuse to buy these foods, many of those workers would have no jobs at all. These food companies may not be doing anything illegal. But is the system fair to those workers? Should buyers of foods like rice, tea, and tuna fish think about where their foods came from? What responsibility does the buyer have for the workers that produce these foods? Visit our website and tell us what you think on the script page of this program. Or write to us at radio @ English . net.
Voice 2
The writer of this program was Courtney Schutt. The producer was Ryan Geertsma. The voices you heard were from the United States and the United Kingdom. All quotes were adapted and voiced by Spotlight. You can find this program and others on our website www.radio.english.net. This program is called "Producing Food." We hope you can join us again for the next Spotlight program. Goodbye.