Two weeks ago, meanwhile, eight pupils of a public school here were hospitalized after they feasted on "colorful, jelly-like candies" with Chinese markings and sold at sari-sari stores near their campus.
Quoting reports, Dr. Lampa Panda, assistant regional health secretary of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said Jefferson Mauring, of Barangay Magsaysay, cooked three kilos of butete (Arothron reticularis) which a neighbor earlier caught that day in Illana Bay.
Mauring and his neighbors partook of the ginataang butete (cooked with coconut milk) as pulutan while they drank tuba (coconut wine). Moments later, they writhed in pain and vomited; Mauring later died.
Mauring’s group offered their pulutan to passersby, including three pre-schoolers who were among the 20 who were hospitalized.
Former Parang councilor Gaudencio Teves said it was Mauring’s first time to prepare a butete dish so he failed to remove the toxin which a neighbor who used to do the cooking, knew how to do.
Panda said experts from the regional health department are helping treat the victims, some of them confined at the Cotabato Regional Medical Center in Cotabato City.
"They cannot just be treated with ordinary antihistamine because some of them were severely poisoned," he said.
Butete is a known delicacy in many coastal villages in Southern Mindanao. Experts first remove sacs of a yellowish substance, each about the size of a calamansi seed, in different parts of its body before cutting it into pieces for cooking.
Local folk believe that eating properly cooked butete can enhance men’s sexual prowess and cure various ailments, including arthritis and skin disorders.
Many restaurants in Japan serve various recipes of butete, which is called "fugu" in the Japanese language.
Two weeks ago, Chinese candies, distributed by a Cotabato City company, downed eight pupils of a public elementary school here.
Dr. Maimona Candao, medical section chief of the Department of Education in Maguindanao, said the students vomited and showed signs of food poisoning after they ingested what she described as "mysterious, jelly-like candies" in sachets marked with Chinese characters.
"The children were treated and are now safe and samples of the jelly-like candies they ate have been gathered for examination by concerned authorities," he said.