EDITORIAL - Formaldehyde rises from the dead

Several lawmakers are asking the Trade and Health departments, as well as the Bureau of Food and Drugs, to ban processed food products manufactured by Chinese companies that have been shut down by their own government for using formaldehyde on their products.

Mention of the chemical compound promptly strikes a familiar chord locally. In Cebu not many years ago, there was a furor raised over the similar use of formaldehyde, not on processed food products, but on fish sold in wet markets.

Formaldehyde, which goes by the commercial name Formalin, has many uses and applications, one of which is as a preservative, as in embalming. Given the Filipino's penchant for ingenuity and improvisation, it did not take long for formaldehyde to find use keeping fish fresh.

Ingestion or inhalation in small doses is probably not harmful. But like all chemicals, their use needs to be properly regulated and controlled, requirements that are patently absent in the use of formaldehyde on fish as preservative.

The discovery of this unauthorized and unsupervised used on fish resulted in a flurry of raids and inspections and tests, not to mention a lot of queasy stomachs at the thought of eating fish laced with something used for the dead.

But that was years ago, and knowing the way government agencies work, all monitoring of fish products for formaldehyde use probably stopped as soon as the media lost interest and found other causes to espouse.

Now here is this thing again about formaldehyde being used on processed food, not by Filipino manufacturers, but certainly on food that have found their way into Philippine markets. That the Chinese went so far as to close these companies can only chill us as to why.

The BFAD is reportedly now conducting tests on these imported processed food products but that is hardly reassuring. And there is no word on parallel tests on fish. Tests ought to be a continuing process by mandated agencies, not only when something stirs them into action.