TWO guys wandered into my office which I opened on a Sunday with a distraught expression on their faces.They asked where they could find the Bureau of Food and Drugs Administration(BFAD) office which was (I learned only belatedly) in the same building we were.

I told them it was a Sunday and it was unlikely that they’d find someone holding office at the BFAD even if it were located anywhere near my office.

One of the guys told me they were from barangay (village) Mermer in Manaoag town and (looking quite both disappointed and desperate) were going to report a seeming food poisoning incident to the BFAD so it can send representatives over and check the source or provider of the food. My newsman’s instinct aroused, I tried to pry the duo for more info but suddenly cautious, they thanked me and hurriedly left. They didn’t even tell me what food it was or how many fell ill from eating it. 

Oh, yes, I did ask if they had a sample of the suspected food but they had none.Neither would they tell me whether it was an individual caterer or a restaurant that supplied the food.  

It would have helped if they brought portions of the food — but then again, going by my own experience with the local BFAD  some years back, it wouldn’t have.

A decade back, I had brought in to the BFAD office then located at the provincial hospital in Dagupan City,now the Region 1 Medical Center (R1MC) a  roll cake that smelled and tasted like gasoline was poured on its icing. I happened to have bought it from a very popular bakeshop in town and after sinfully slicing a piece from it, I retched and recoiled from the taste — gas!

What do you know, when I went to BFAD, with the “evidence” on hand, I was told “it” had to be preserved yet since their medical technologist-or-something won’t be in for a week, shuttling as he or she does from God-knows-where to the provincial hospital on erratic schedule. Tough luck!

I said I was going to leave the cake with them and would they please just call me if their technologist is in so I can substantiate my complaint? No way, Jose, they had no freezer or refrigerator to store the “evidence” in so please, sir, would you just preserve it at home or elsewhere and bring it back here later?

Whaaatt, they want me to literally hold the pie till they’re ready to look at the “thing?” I resisted the urge to just throw it at the BFAD rep’s face and my Christian upbringing told me to just dump the “evidence” in the first trash can I saw outside. End of complaint.

But that was a decade back, like I said. Somehow, the health department unit must have had some improvements on their public complaints department by now. The two Manaoag guys’ “apparent” case of food poisoning inquiry could have put my hypothesis to a new test. Too bad, they left in a huff.

Last I heard of the BFAD’s “exploits”, their people cleared the  manufacturer of a particular package of antibiotic (?)vial supplies in an Urdaneta City hospital that would not, wonder of wonders, dissolve in water! The tale goes that when the BFAD guys came to take the subject package of vials purportedly for proper lab checking in their regional office in San Fernando, La Union, they conducted a test on one vial inside their running air-conditioned vehicle (they couldn’t wait to get to their regional laboratory facilities, see?) and when the substance mixed with water, according to them, it dissolved!

Miracles must happen in air-conditioned vehicles running along the road — that’s the plausible explanation for the BFAD Eureka!

You guessed, it, the manufacturer was very happy and would, in all probability, continue supplying the provincial government of Pangasinan with its brand of “miraculous” drugs after having passed the bureau’s “rigid and running” standards.