The speed and extent of the food-poisoning incident involving durian candy in the south has been nothing short of alarming. From the first report last Friday about 20 kids falling ill after ingesting the candy they had bought from ambulant vendors in the school premises, the number swiftly rose to 600, then to over 1,000. According to the Department of Health, as of this writing, 1,925 people have been affected, mostly elementary and high school students in Tandag City and in six towns of Surigao del Sur. Thankfully, no one has died, but 66 remain in hospital.
Now comes news of a similar incident: 15 students in North Cotabato hospitalized after eating siopao bought from their school canteen last Thursday. The victims, Grade 5 pupils aged 9 to 11, displayed the same symptoms that downed those who ate the durian candy: nausea, vomiting, acute abdominal cramps, gastritis—leading health authorities to suspect that the food items carried a still unknown contaminant, or were already expired when sold.
Mass food poisoning incidents in disparate towns within days… What is going on? More distressingly, the incidents involved poor schoolchildren buying food from vendors who apparently could sell their wares in and around school premises unregulated. In the North Cotabato case, the spoiled food even came from the school canteen.
The manufacturer of Wendy’s Durian Candy, Janet E. Aquino, has turned herself in to authorities and acknowledged that the food item in question had come from her company. But she disclaimed direct responsibility for the health scare; She said that her candies were sold in batches of 100 while those that downed the kids were reportedly being sold in packets of 20, and that her candies were safe for consumption and had a shelf life of six months, but that she couldn’t guarantee that every candy sold was not yet expired or tainted, because retailers and bulk buyers apparently repacked and sold them in smaller packets.
Could it be a case of an isolated batch of candies that got tainted by something? Possibly, but the manufacturer’s problem is much bigger at this point than a random incident of a product done poorly, or a manufacturing process gone awry. It turns out that Wendy’s Durian Candy, based in Davao City, has been operating for the last six years as a home-based enterprise without certification from the Food and Drug Administration. That means no government inspection of any kind had been done on the candy products or on the safety and quality of the process employed to make them, before the stuff was sold to schoolkids and other consumers.
A further omission happened down the line, with school authorities apparently having allowed the sale of such food in their premises. Then again, how exactly do you police ordinary vendors in the school environment selling such ubiquitous homemade snacks as “kamote-Q”or turon, isaw or fishballs, balut or boiled banana—and locally made candy, in this case?
The bigger responsibility still rests with the food and health agencies, and here again is a case of an entity falling through the regulatory cracks either through, one suspects, plain negligence or deliberate indifference. As in the case of buildings that are built in violation of fire safety regulations, or companies that evade tax or customs duties or ignore the labor code with winking assist from government inspectors, scratch the surface of the latest public incident or social aggravation and you see a government failing to do its fundamental duty. Six years—that’s how long Wendy’s Durian Candy has been selling its products without certification from the FDA, for instance. How did it manage to do that?
A balance, of course, should be struck between encouraging entrepreneurs to invest in food enterprises, and ensuring that their processes and finished products are in compliance with, at the very least, health and safety regulations, so that the consuming public, especially its most vulnerable sectors such as schoolchildren and poor citizens, may be spared food-poisoning incidents and other costly and potentially life-threatening health scares. Public safety and welfare are paramount, or the next incident may prove to be truly fatal.
Davao authorities have shuttered Wendy’s Durian Candy for now, while school officials have banned outside vendors from school premises. But these are stopgap measures. What comprehensive, long-term plan does the government have in mind to address glaring holes in food and health regulation?