Rotten: A Netflix Original Documentary Series Review // Gabriella Gricius

This month, Netflix released yet another original series, this one called Rotten. Unlike all of the Marvel and DC Comics television shows, Rotten takes us through the different parts of corruption and fraud in the food industry. For each of the six episodes, the producers take on a different part of the industry - from bee and honey production, the peanut allergy problem, to the vast issues plaguing the fishery industries. For the purposes of our theme, I watched the sixth episode - “Cod is Dead.”

How we produce food is inextricably related to what the state of the environment is. Particularly in the United States, food production is intertwined with many of the issues that face the American public. Overfishing or trying to take more than the environment can give means that the food industry often takes shortcuts, such as bypassing regulations. With markets like that of the United States which consumes five billion pounds of seafood a year, there’s incentivization to take those shortcuts on a regular basis.

Due to climate change, the oceans of the world are facing higher rates of salt in the water- leading to less diversity and fewer fish. Rotten’s sixth episode focuses on the fishing industry, discussing the global fishing crisis - and how overfishing links the issue of environmental policy to food production regulation. In other words, everything is so closely interrelated that should one block change, the rest will also fall.

One aspect that the episode talked about was the issue of privatizing fish and the deep division between fishermen and scientists. Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, the American government began to increase regulation and set a total allowable catch on the East Coast, dividing that amount among big and small boats in “catch shares” in order to protect fish populations. Iceland also implemented this measure 15 years earlier - and ended up killing their small boat industry although the cod population went up. But how does that square with fewer fishermen and jobs? Answer: For small fishery owners, it doesn’t.

Rotten is a great way to expand your own knowledge of the inner workings of the food industry while understanding the connections between climate change and what is considered “normal.” What I personally took away from the documentary was that food production is not transparent at all. Unless you go out of your way to learn about the fish industry, you will never know about the divisive history of regulation nor the crisis that spurred on what we see in our grocery stores today.

Check out the trailer below and let us know your favorite episode!