Meanwhile this week marked World Food Day, celebrated by the Food and
Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations on October 16th. This was
the date in 1948 when the right to food was first formerly recognised by
the global community as a basic human right.

Sixty years on, there is massive malnutrition around the world. Millions
of children in India die each year with a shocking 47 percent of children
under 5 suffering from malnutrition and regularly going to bed hungry. One
in eleven children born in the country are currently dying before reaching
their sixth birthday, with half of these deaths attributable to malnutrition.

Closer to home, every European eats ten kilograms a year of artificially
irrigated greenhouse vegetables from southern Spain, with water shortages
the result. In Vienna the amount of unsold bread sent back to be disposed
of each day is enough to supply Austria's second-largest city, Graz.
Around 350,000 hectares of agricultural land in Latin America is dedicated to
the cultivation of soybeans to feed Austria's livestock alone, meanwhile a
quarter of the local population starves.

FOOD NOT BOMBS

The FnB group in Whitechapel started off in spring 2007. Every week, we're
going skipping food, mainly vegetables, in several locations, notably some
wholesale markets. Hard to imagine how huge is the amount of wasted food
over there! When we get lucky, we get also bread and sweets (not always
vegan though!) from other places.

On the saturday morning, we use the rampART kitchen to cook some nice
vegan meals: usually mash, stir fry, miso stew, cakes etc. We even had
some very successful fries!

The food is then given away in a small local park. Hungry people can be
local families, homelesses, activist friends, random people passing by
etc. Maybe 50 or 60 people can be fed every saturday. There is also
usually a sound system and a free shop (mainly clothes).

Hopefully, another Food not Bombs group will be starting in Brixton soon,
spreading the movement all over london as it is spreading all over the
planet!


THURS 8PM

The above sets the scene to the two films featured at our cinema this
week....

1. OUR DAILY BREAD
 http://www.ourdailybread.at/

A wide-screen tableau of a feast which isn't always easy to digest - and
in which we all take part. Welcome to the world of industrial food
production and high-tech farming! To the rhythm of conveyor belts and
immense machines, the film looks without commenting into the places where
food is produced in Europe: monumental spaces, surreal landscapes and
bizarre sounds - a cool, industrial environment which leaves little space
for individualism. People, animals, crops and machines play a supporting
role in the logistics of this system which provides our society's standard
of living.

2. We Feed the World
 http://www.we-feed-the-world.at/

Austrian filmmaker Erwin Wagenhofer traces the origins of the food we eat.
His journey takes him to France, Spain, Romania, Switzerland, Brazil and
back to Austria.

This is a film about food and globalisation, fishermen and farmers,
long-distance lorry drivers and high-powered corporate executives, the
flow of goods and cash flow–a film about scarcity amid plenty. With its
unforgettable images, the film provides insight into the production of our
food and answers the question what world hunger has to do with us .