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BY MAE SINGUAY
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Wednesday, March 15, 2017
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BACOLOD City – Sugar industry stakeholders are staging a rally against the use of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) on March 20.
Protesters will call for the boycott of beverage companies using the alternative sweetener, specifically Coca-Cola FEMSA Philippines, Inc.
Participants hope the two-hour rally in front of the Coca-Cola plant in Barangay Mansilingan will become “the biggest in years” against the company.
The planned protest contributes to the mounting pressure from sugar producers for industry users to reduce the importation and use of the HFCS, which they claim is hurting local planters and farm workers.
Planters and other farmworkers, agrarian reform beneficiaries, and other sectors are expected to join the rally led by the Confederation of Sugar Producers Cooperative.
“Boycott” is “the only language Coke (Coca-Cola) understands,” according to Nick Ledesma of the First Farmers Association.
“We will show them how serious we are,” Ledesma said in a Facebook post.“This is just the beginning.”
They will target other beverage companies that continue using the HFCS “but have been low-key.”
“We know who they are,” he said.
Ledesma said they are not asking for industry users to use only locally produced sugar, only a “70-30” ratio in favor of the product.
Local producers cannot provide all the industry users’ sweetener needs, but the current consumption ratio heavily favors the imported HFCS, he said.
Citing Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) head Anna Rosario Paner, Ledesma said the HFCS that entered the Philippines in the last five years was equivalent to 5 million bags, or “33 percent of the country’s entire refined (sugar) market.”
Panay News was still trying to reach Coca-Cola for comment as of press time.
The SRA has issued Sugar Order No. 3, which sets regulations for the release of imported HFCS and chemically pure fructose.
Coca-Cola filed a civil suit seeking the nullity of the Sugar Order. The company also asked the Regional Trial Court Branch 98 in Quezon City to issue a temporary restraining order against the order.
The court denied the petition for a restraining order but is pushing through with the civil case. It set an injunction hearing on March 20./PN
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