DAVAO CITY, Philippines—The Pilipino Banana Growers and Exporters Association (PBGEA) lashed back at the Department of Health for recommending a ban on the practice of spraying chemicals in banana plantations, saying the decision was a last ditch effort of the DOH officials to save face.
Stephen Antig, president of PBGEA, the largest group of banana industry players, in a letter addressed to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, said the decision of DOH was designed to “evade responsibility over the criminal acts of Secretary (Francisco) Duque and his in-house anti-spray unit against the residents of Camocaan and the Philippine Banana Industry.”
“Secretary Duque must stand accountable for deliberately withholding information vital to protecting the competence and the integrity of the Department of Health and as well as the competence and integrity of the Filipino scientific community,” said Antig.
Recently, the DOH executive committee urged the Department of Agriculture to order a ban on aerial spraying as the banana industry had yet to present a study convincing enough to assure residents that the pesticides were safe for people, animals and the environment.
The recommendation was reached after top DOH officials adopted the results and recommendations of a 2006 study conducted by the DOH, the Philippine Society of Clinical and Occupational Toxicology Inc. and the National Poison Control and Management Center of the University of the Philippines. The study was conducted in the village of Guihing in Hagonoy, Davao del Sur.
The DOH also came up with four other recommendations, one of which asked the banana industry to establish a health surveillance system to detect effects of the pesticides used in producing Cavendish bananas.
Antig said: “Their recommendation couched in distorted facts, some came right at the heel of the embarrassing pronouncement of the World Health Organization that the study they conducted was ‘inconclusive, full of loopholes and does not support their recommendation to ban aerial spraying.”
Antig then accused Duque of “abetting the gross incompetence of his subordinates, giving official sanction to a study that was time and again found to be falsified.”
Duque, he said, “shamelessly defied and disregarded the counsel of the majority of the inter-agency on environmental health, the regional inter-agency on environmental health and the economic development council of Region XI.”
But despite this, Antig expressed optimism that Department of Agriculture would not ban the highly controversial agricultural practice, which was earlier banned in Davao City through a resolution. That resolution later became a subject of a legal battle.
PBGEA questioned Davao’s ban and the Court of Appeals in Cagayan de Oro favored their case, junking the basic constitutional-enshrined mandate of a local government to protect its people and the environment from activities that it believed could bring destruction and danger.
“We are fully confident that the Department of Agriculture will carefully consider Secretary Duque’s recommendation with dispassionate scientific objectivity and in accordance to the tenets and sound management principles,” Antig said.
Earlier, Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Rosales and three other top officials of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines called the aerial spraying of chemicals as an immoral act that has been infringing on human health and dignity. The bishops also challenged PBGEA to exercise its corporate social responsibility by banning aerial spraying.
