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Japan to dump Mercury infested fish in RP under JPEPA, warns Pamalakaya

Opponents of the controversial trade pact between Japan and the Philippines today warned the national government that the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement or JPEPA would allow the Japanese government to dump its’ Mercury infested fish in the country.

The militant fisherfolk alliance Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya), a staunch critic of the new trade agreement argued that JPEPA will further empower Japan to flood the local market with surplus fish products contaminated with Mercury and other toxic materials dangerous to public health.

Pamalakaya national chair Fernando Hicap said under JPEPA the Philippine government will further relax the requirements on the entry of Japanese fish products and other agricultural products, including quarantine of food imported from Japan.

“There is a high level of possibility that most of the fish products coming from Japan are infested with Mercury and other kinds of toxic substances,” the militant leader said citing previous incidences involving death and serious illnesses in Japan due to eating of Mercury contaminated fish.

Hicap said in the early 70s, over 100 Japanese either died or became very ill because of their exposure to methyl Mercury emanating from local industrial discharge that poisoned the nearby fishing grounds in Minimata, Japan.

Just recently, Hicap said, China had tightened the quarantine of food imported from Japan after Chinese authorities found out that 30 batches of imported food from Japan failed to meet China’s quality rules on imported products.

Pamalakaya’s Hicap said Chinese food authorities found excessive sorbic acid found in Japanese fish sausages, which was 17 times higher than the 1.3g/kg allowed by Chinese sanitation authorities. In East China’s Shandong province, some frozen octopus and fish imported from Japan were found to contain dangerous bacteria that may cause meningitis and blood poisoning.

Pamalakaya said in Guangdong, South China, potato powder imported from Japan contained excessive sulfur dioxide while the cadmium content of some frozen oysters was five times higher than the permissible upper limit.

“The Philippine government has been importing these Japanese products since the early phase of trade liberalization during the Structural Adjustment Program of the Marcos dictatorship in the early 80s up to the present,” the militant group said.

Pamalakaya said the government had been importing an average of 10,000 metric tons of various fish and marine products from Japan since the country signed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and became an official member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995.

Beginning 2002, Japan slowed down the exportation of fish products to the Philippines reducing its total exports to 6,765 metric tons and concentrated more on importation of high value fish products from the country. In the same year, Japan imported 30,065 metric tons of high value fish crops from the Philippines on the condition that the Philippines would relax its policies on Japanese investments.

“JPEPA is a super disaster in the making. A total holocaust being engineered by an imperialist master in collaboration with a puppet-client state. We have no option but to declare war against JPEPA and the brains behind this national economic massacre of 86 million Filipinos,” Pamalakaya said. #

posted by: GerryCorpuz at 06:35 | link | comments |

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