Pill makes clams more nutritious

Filipino inventor Bonifacio Comandante has done it again. In 2004 he found a way to put fish to sleep for cheaper long-distance haulage and still sell fresh from the sea. This time he developed a pill and a process to infuse shellfish with health nutrients and bring them live to supermarkets.

Nicknamed "Seafood Viagra", the idea is to harvest mature mollusks from fishponds and force-feed them in tanks with minerals invigorating to humans. With apologies to Pfizer, maker of the heart wonder drug that also stimulates sex, Boni explains that his Viagra stands for vitamins and green algae. Basically he fortifies oysters, mussels and clams with amino acids, vitamins, chlorella and spirulina for diners’ better health. He then mixes his "secret sleeping pill" into the tank water. Depending on the dosage, the shellfish hibernate for an hour or a day – whatever time it takes to transport to market. There they awaken to be sold live.

The process is like putting Vitamin B in bread or iodine in salt under health laws. But Boni’s invention will mix a dozen vitamins and minerals into one. Amino acids are the building blocks of essential protein. Chlorella and spirulina are usually sold in capsules as health supplements. Shellfish will ingest the nutrients and, because put to sleep before egestion, will pass these on to eaters. "We can make our people healthier, especially the poor who are malnourished of protein," Boni enthuses.

Boni intends to sell his mix and method to local governments. Municipal or barangay funds can be used to build cement tanks. Fisher folk can then be employed to haul the mollusks from fish farms or river mouths, force-feed and lullaby them, then transport to the city. "It’s also for job generation," Boni says. He has set up aquariums in selected SM super marts to demonstrate how it works – and sell live tilapia, talakitok (jack) and lapu-lapu (grouper) from the sea and ponds.

Boni’s latest discovery came while tinkering with new ideas during a yearlong wait for the international patent release on his first invention. Once copyrighted, the sleep potion would make transporting live fish cheaper because no longer in water that quadruples the weight of paid shipment. But Boni needed other uses for the product. So he came up with fortifying shellfish with nutrients before sleep inducement.

The sleep potion had won the top award in a California competition on business innovations in 2004. An engineer by profession, Boni couldn’t afford the $3-million bond needed for copyright protection. Australian businessmen came to the rescue and bankrolled the fee in exchange for marketing rights. The mix, which Boni assures is a natural substance that abounds in salt water, will remain a Filipino secret. "That’s so we can make my sleeping potion a dollar earner for the country," he beams.

That first discovery was serendipitous. Boni, as head of an NGO for higher incomes for fisher folk, used to experiment with changing lapu-lapu females into males for fertilizing. After working late, he’d stow his fish in a waterless icebox and be surprised that they’re still alive the next day. He conducted separate experiments on the life extender, and discovered it to be that natural – but his secret – substance.

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If friends of the late Fernando Poe Jr. now advise his kin to not accept the National Artist award, then they shouldn’t have nominated him in the first place. Truth to tell, it was FPJ’s pals and 2004 presidential campaigners who caused his inclusion in this year’s roster of art honorees. They felt they owed him a favor for helping them out individually through the Movie Workers Welfare Fund, and the industry through the Filipino Academy for Movie Arts and Sciences. The National Commission for Culture and the Arts, composed of art peers, immediately adjudged FPJ among the cinema greats. Now they’re cajoling FPJ’s family to snub the awards ceremony to be headed by FPJ’s political foe Gloria Arroyo.

A lesson could have been picked up from the Marcos years. At that time the martial ruler was enticing political dissenter Heherson Alvarez to come home from Washington where he was lobbying against repression. A go-between said there was a plan to nominate Alvarez’s wife, prolific stage actress-director Cecile Guidote, as National Artist for Theater. The couple didn’t think twice in turning down the mere nomination, much more the sure award. The fought on to help topple Marcos’s regime in Feb. 1986.

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Elections should push through in May 2007, whether for the usual congressional and local seats, or for an interim Parliament that Charter change advocates want. Term extensions would be immoral and illegal.

But the budget impasse, warns Comelec chairman Benjamin Abalos, could mar the elections. Congress failure to pass the 2006 budget, already long delayed, would automatically reenact the 2005 version. Abalos says that would deprive the Comelec of the additional funds it needs in 2006 to prepare early for the 2007 balloting.

The deadlock arose from the Senate’s slashing of P64 billion from the Malacañang proposal, approved by the House of Representatives, for P1.02 trillion. Senators were last reported to be insisting on the cut during the bicameral conference, while congressmen stood pat on no cuts.

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