Food chain's dark shadow

18 June 2015 - 02:01 By Andrea Burgener

What the eye does not see, the heart does not grieve over. InvisibilityNothing is a better slogan for our relationship to food, and edible animals in particular, since our food chain became the industrialised beast it is now.Most of us still don't have a clue what's going on before the food hits our plates. That's weird, because food provenance is big news . But then again, it's big news for the minority. Let's also admit that much of this news is irritating sound-bite stuff: ''Farm to Fork", ''Farm to Table", ''Nose to Tail" - it's all one big, fuzzy, rustic story. And very much restricted to the table. Because gastronomic pursuits are now so fetishised, our interest in provenance seems restricted to food and drink. Oh and sneakers, if they come from sweat-shops. The provenance of hardware goods, medicines and stationery? Not so sexy. The fact that your cigarette has animal bits in it? Let's not go there.Even quite conscious eaters - bar those in the vegan lunatic fringe who refuse to kill head-lice - often don't think about animal issues outside of the food chain. It's just too difficult, too abstract.If you'd like to get a grip on some of the facts, visit the fascinating work of Dutch designer/artist Christien Meindertsma, whose works detail processes which have become removed from us. In her work Pig 05049 she details the dissection and journey of one industrially raised pig across an astonishing array of goods. It's simply staggering.On one level, it's quite comforting to know that everything including the squeak is put to good use; on another, it's inexplicably disturbing and macabre. Some of the more amazing and less gastronomic uses for industrial pig parts are ammunition, photographic paper, heart valves, car brakes, chewing gum, porcelain, cigarettes, hair conditioner and paint. Go to www.christienmeinderstma.com to see details on the pig project.Back to invisibility in the food world, and this time under water. There is an invisible monster which forms a looming shadow over every plate of prawns. I'm talking wild-harvested prawns, not the farmed type. The farmed have their own invisible back-story involving destroyed coastal areas, but the wild prawn back-story is even more gobsmacking. The monstrous unseen thing is the by-catch. To get 1kg of prawns onto a plate, anything up to 20kg of by-catch must be taken along for the ride. This 20kg of by-catch includes turtles, marine birds and dolphins.Turns out a plate of wild caught prawns is not really much about the prawns at all. It's about those unseen dudes who aren't even actually consumed. Or, I believe, made into paint or ammo. It's a mad world...

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