Press Release
July 9, 2008

Villar to DoH : Be careful with health advisories

Senate President Manny Villar today joined local government officials in appealing to national health officials to be more prudent in issuing advisories on fish or sea products that are unsafe for human consumption.

"Loose lips sink fishing ships," Villar, a former shrimp vendor, said in reaction to a revoked Department of Health advisory, warning people against eating fish in the wake of the sinking of MV Princess of the Stars off Sibuyan island.

"Such advisories should be based on a scientific finding, and not just on a whim or a knee-jerk reaction without basis," Villar said.

If the DoH had been more careful, "there would have been no need for local officials to go on a public display of eating fish," Villar said as governors from Albay to Negros Occidental continue to stage fish-eating feasts to assuage the people of their fears of consuming marine products .

Although it will be very hard to quantify it, fishermen lost millions of pesos in income due to the adverse publicity caused by that unfortunate warning from some DoH officials, Villar said.

"Fishermen were already reeling from high gas prices - as fuel eats up as much as 80 percent of their income - when the health advisory came out," he said.

But it is not only the fishing industry who got hit by the "bad press" that fish got, "but ordinary folks who rely on fish as a cheap viand, " he said .

Next to rice, it is fish that Filipinos eat most, with annual per capita fish consumption of 38 kilos in 2005.

In the wake of the snafu of the DoH fish advisory, Villar called for "the establishment of protocols that will guide the issuance of such, if need be, in the future."

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