'Bagoong' an effective rat-killing agent - DA

CABANATUAN CITY , Philippines  — Bagoong as a rat-killing agent?

And why not if officials of the Department of Agriculture (DA) in Central Luzon are to be believed.

In Nueva Ecija, boneless bagoong has been proven an effective exterminator of rats, its “aroma” drawing rats close to rat poison and preventing them from infesting local farms.

Redentor Gatus, DA regional director for Central Luzon, told The STAR that rats go crazy over the smell of boneless bagoong.

Gatus said bagoong is mixed with powdered zinc phosphide, a known rat poisoning agent, and binglid (broken rice) and other organic materials.

He said one pack of boneless bagoong mixed with zinc phosphide with every 150 grains of rice makes the potent mix a deadly potion against rats.

“Rats are somehow magnetized by the smell of bagoong and they gather like a crowd to where its odor comes from,” he said.

Gatus said the use of bagoong was part of the massive rat poisoning campaign dubbed “Oplan Pain” launched by the DA with the provincial agriculturist office and the various municipal agricultural offices in Nueva Ecija to eradicate rat infestation.

Gatus said Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap has ordered regional agriculture officials to undertake the rat infestation campaign in Nueva Ecija, a known rice bowl, amid reports that ricefields in 16 of its 27 towns have been affected by rat infestation.

Aside from zinc phosphide dispersed by agriculture technicians, the DA regional office has also equipped municipal agricultural offices in the affected towns with flame-throwers, the nozzle of which are placed in small circular thresholds found in levies and dikes called rat burrows where the rats live.

With the heat generated by flame-throwers, rats are driven out of the burrows and out in the open where they are bludgeoned to death with the use of wooden canes. This is normally done before and after harvest as part of land-clearing operations to reduce the risk of rat infestation.

Jun Espiritu, chief of the public information office of DA-Region 3, said farmers also get pointers from agricultural experts on the various means to eliminate rats apart from the use of zinc phosphide and flame-throwers.

Among these measures, he said, include narrowing of the sizes of dikes and levies, which should be no more than six inches tall and eight inches wide so that rats won’t have space to live and by digging the holes and burrows found in their farms.

Farmers, he added, are also advised to circumfuse their farms with plastic sheets, a method known as total rat barrier system, one month before the regular planting.

Gatus denied the reported rampant onslaught of rats in Nueva Ecija farms, noting that based on the latest rat situation report, only 4.34 percent of the total ricefields in 16 towns had been infested.   — With Ric Sapnu