Before You Eat: The Untold Stories Behind Your Seafood

For Indonesians who live in coastal areas, going out to sea for a better living is common. With declining local fishing stocks, local youths often get work on foreign-owned fishing vessels. They face violent physical abuse, bad food, and untreated illnesses, which sometimes lead to their death. Before You Eat Director Kasan Kurdi states that this film “shows the irony of a modern life on the contrary to the efforts to fill the human basic needs: eat.” The crews “are going out to sea for two big missions: to fill the public demand from all over the world for seafood and to feed their own family at home while hoping that they could make a better living.” Using the crews' mobile phone footage, the Indonesian Migrant Workers Union's video archive, and Greenpeace video archive, Before You Eat follows a group of crews to show how the exploitation of the Indonesian fishing vessel crews happens not only before they leave Indonesia and while working in foreign fishing vessels but also when they go back home. It portrays the crew’s recruitment process, the working conditions, and how the modern slavery system has trapped the crews in illegal fishing practices. Director Kasan Kurdi points out that “this industry sacrifices its workers while depleting the ocean.” In the end,  Before You Eat asks the question: "How do we treat this only one ocean?"

This enlightening evening will explore the complexities of the twinned issues of environmental and human rights abuses at sea through the Before You Eat documentary, messages from fishers who have worked aboard these vessels, and a panel discussion led by experts in the field. A reception will follow.