Residents of farmland communities in Davao del Norte joined banana growers in reiterating the call of the “911 Save Our Sagingan” (SOS) movement for the country’s 15th Congress to legislate a law regulating the aerial spraying of low-dose fungicide as an agricultural practice in the country.
Renante Bangoy, a banana grower and chair of the three-year-old movement, said in a press statement Friday that “it is high time to resolve once and for all the aerial spraying issue on the basis of incontrovertible scientific facts and put closure to the unfounded allegations of a foreign-funded non-government organization that it poses a risk to people’s health and the environment.”
“The method has been in use for the past 45 years and that the certainty of its safety is established by the fact that nobody was adversely affected by it,” said Bangoy citing the favorable endorsement of the practice by various scientific, business, religious, civil society and professional organizations.
In a resolution dated March 12, 2010, a consortia of Philippine scientific societies and professional associations — the Philippine Association of Entomologists, the Philippine Phytopathological Society, the Crop Protection Association of the Philippines, the Weed Science Society of the Phililippines and the Pest Control Association of the Philippines — declared that “aerial spraying is proven to be the safest and most effective application method for agricultural chemicals under a regime of precision agriculture.”
The region’s Roman Catholic bishops, in a pastoral statement, declared that “there is lack of data to ban aerial spraying” after intensive separate consultations with government, representatives of the Dutch-funded anti-aerial spray group Interface Development Interventions (IDI), community doctors and residents of communities near banana farmlands.
Former Congresswoman Evelinda Cabilao, chairperson of the 14th Congress’ Committee on Ecology, told media, after a gruelling open-door hearing on November 20, 2009 attended by both proponents and oppositors, that “the need is to regulate and not ban aerial spraying.”
Dr. Andrew Hewitt, a regulatory consultant to the US Environmental Protection Agency and world-renown aerial spraying expert, was also quoted telling students in agricultural sciences at the University of the Philippines (Mindanao) last year that he personally assessed the aerial spraying practices of banana companies and found them in accordance with international safety standards.
Banana growers also debunked oppositors’ repetitious claim that the industry is spraying all kinds of pesticides as the industry sprays only a formulation of low-dose fungicide to control Black Sigatoka. [ER Lamsen Jnr.]
