India, Aug. 16 -- 1In your Author's Note, you say: "There are parts of our food system that some people don't want us to see." What is the most invisibilised part of the food chain that you have photographed? Animal operations are quite sensitive to get access to. People get really touchy because there's been, especially in the industrialised world, a lot more concern about animal rights, and farmers get criticised a lot. Then there's large-scale agriculture. People in the corporate world are very cautious. When you go to a private farmer who has five acres of land and you want to photograph them harvesting their stuff, there's no issue. But when you get into corporations, they get nervous and the lawyers get involved and it all gets very closed. I also looked at fishing quite a bit and it's difficult getting onto fishing boats. Squid boats can be at sea for six months at a time. I wasn't volunteering for that. The other thing that's really complicated are illegal activities, whether it's illegal fishing or immigrant labour. In the US, for example, close to half the food is harvested by undocumented workers. And lastly, there is the government. In India, there's a huge government food corporation that sells large amounts of food to the poor at subsidised prices. There's a lot of waste in those warehouses. But India, of course, has a lot of bureaucracy. You try to get into those warehouses, and it's extremely difficult. The bureaucracy is really quite impressive! 2What was it like to contrast industrial livestock supply chains with a small-scale butchery, as you did in Belgium? I'm not a pig whisperer, obviously. I can't talk to pigs, but if you look, you can see that the animals are stressed. They are going into the kill chute and they're resisting. I saw that with the pigs. And they're much more intelligent than the chickens or cows. It was disturbing to watch. In the small butchery I went to, they were doing a really good job. The pigs didn't really know they were about to go down. They were killed instantly. It was interesting that the small butcher shop's prices were only 20% higher than the prices in the supermarket, which is really good for a small-scale operation. The small butcher also had producers who raised animals just for him. He was doing really high-quality work for very little extra cost, with the efficiency of proximity. I also visited the biggest slaughterhouse for cattle in Brazil, and they were pretty good. In India, I went to the biggest buffalo slaughterhouse and it was fascinating. It was all Muslims and they had to kill them halal. It was quick. They were doing a good job. I didn't see people abusing animals. There is no incentive for a farmer to abuse animals. I'm sure it happens in places. But I didn't go looking for it and I didn't see it....