One rule for the big boys, one rule for the small

Landline – 13/4/2003: Unfair meal gives taste of global trade pitfalls. Australian Broadcasting Corp

We’ve asked Antony Worrall Thompson to create a world-class meal but with ingredients we’ve bought from some of the world’s poorest farmers.

Almost three billion people in the world live on less than two dollars a day. Many farm the land. And from the rice fields of Haiti to the tomato fields of Ghana they tell you the rich world is harming them more through unfair trade than it helps them with aid.

“One rule for the big boys, one rule for the small. Nothing really changes, does it,” Antony Worall Thompson, Celebrity Chef, said.

History, they say, repeats itself as farce. Three decades after its last war with Vietnam, America is fighting another, not in the Mekong but the Mississippi Delta, not over communism but over catfish. To find the first ingredient for our unfairly traded meal we drove into the heart of catfish country.