Start Date
26-5-2026 2:15 PM
End Date
26-5-2026 2:30 PM
Description
At the end of Pink Slime (2024) by Uruguayan writer Fernanda Trías, the unnamed narrator/protagonist eats tuna from a can and drops the empty container in the river, where it “floated for a moment until the water found its way in and dragged it to the bottom.” This scene mirrors the opening of the novel, when a fisherman releases back into the water a fish “so slight that it made no noise as it broke the surface. The last fish.” The presence of the fish, first as a live being and then as a preserved, shelf-stable foodstuff, frame the dystopian story of a country living through a mysterious plague that killed the fish in the “river swelling like an octopus, the foam tinted crimson by algae” and mortally infects people exposed to the red wind. The extreme toxicity in the water and air creates a crisis situation of food scarcity, hospital overcrowding, government misinformation, and social breakdown. This paper will focus on the food crisis brought on by the environmental collapse described in the novel. It will address the survival methods of a society living in a spent and sick planet, where birds are gone and fish are dead, water and air pollution are extreme, farming or fishing is not possible, and one of the few available food sources is Meatrite, “an ideal foodstuff: twenty grams of protein per portion, served in a small plastic cup” commonly known as the Pink Slime of the novel’s title.
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Included in
“The Last Fish”: Environmental Collapse and Food Crisis in Pink Slime (2024) by Fernanda Trías
At the end of Pink Slime (2024) by Uruguayan writer Fernanda Trías, the unnamed narrator/protagonist eats tuna from a can and drops the empty container in the river, where it “floated for a moment until the water found its way in and dragged it to the bottom.” This scene mirrors the opening of the novel, when a fisherman releases back into the water a fish “so slight that it made no noise as it broke the surface. The last fish.” The presence of the fish, first as a live being and then as a preserved, shelf-stable foodstuff, frame the dystopian story of a country living through a mysterious plague that killed the fish in the “river swelling like an octopus, the foam tinted crimson by algae” and mortally infects people exposed to the red wind. The extreme toxicity in the water and air creates a crisis situation of food scarcity, hospital overcrowding, government misinformation, and social breakdown. This paper will focus on the food crisis brought on by the environmental collapse described in the novel. It will address the survival methods of a society living in a spent and sick planet, where birds are gone and fish are dead, water and air pollution are extreme, farming or fishing is not possible, and one of the few available food sources is Meatrite, “an ideal foodstuff: twenty grams of protein per portion, served in a small plastic cup” commonly known as the Pink Slime of the novel’s title.