Banana industry not defying city ordinances, Ocampo told

The banana export industry is not defying a Davao City ordinance and other local ordinances banning aerial spraying as alleged by party-list Rep. Satur Ocampo in a press statement published in a local daily last week.
Banana growers and exporters have not defied  ordinances, much less the anti-aerial spraying ordinance of Davao City, said Stephen Antig, president of the Philippine Banana Growers and Exporters Association (PBGEA) in reaction  to the news item quoting Ocampo that banana growers have defied local ordinances.
“What we did was simply avail ourselves of our democratic right to question the constitutionality of the ordinance before the court, in order to protect the rights of half a million people directly and indirectly benefited by the banana industry,” Antig said.
The case is now with the Supreme Court, after the industry won in the Court of Appeals, the PBGEA president said, adding that filing a case on the legality of an ordinance or law does not constitute defiance.
“Mr. Ocampo knows this for a fact because he has availed himself of this right to question certain actions of the government and by those running it,” he said.
Antig, however, said that the PBGEA is not at all surprised why Ocampo made the statement against aerial spraying, as  he is a congressmen who supports a bill seeking a ban on aerial spraying in the country.
A congressional hearing on the proposal was conducted in Davao City on November 20, 2009.
During that hearing upwards of 10,000 banana small growers and workers came down from their places of work in the provinces to picket the hearing venue.
The bill has been overtaken by the election season, and has to be refiled in the next Congress if its proponents would decide to pursue it.
As this developed, PBGEA continues to invite personalities favoring the ban to come to the plantations in Davao and other parts of Mindanao and see for themselves how aerial spraying is being done, Antig bared.
PBGEA and its crop protection scientists maintain that aerial spraying with low-dose fungicide as practiced by the industry for the last four decades is safe.