IT is unbelievable that a shipping accident should trigger panic in the stomachs of many people in the Philippines.
The disaster that hit MV Princess of the Stars — it sank off the stormy seas in Romblon on June 21 — has created paranoia over carnivorous fish.
Fear of eating fish today beats the scare that the red tide creates.
You hear people say: “Fish swim everywhere. How can you guarantee that the fish I am eating hasn’t partaken of . . . ”
Pictures of the victims in that shipping tragedy constantly flood TV news. It has helped create the feeling that all sea creatures feast on dead bodies.
In fact, there are herbivorous fish (fish that eat only seaweeds) that abhor flesh like the plague.
Science tells us that animals process whatever they eat, turn them into meat or if they’re plants, turn them into chlorophyll, sugar and carbohydrates — fruits and green leafy vegetables, as we understand it.
None of the gory stuff that plants and animals eat touches our lips.
However, the idea that a dead body becomes fodder to plants, animals, birds and fish just blows the mind. People feel as if they are eating the body itself and it becomes part of their own being.
But think about this: Every day, before the Stars fell into the sea, living things die and rest into the bottom of the forest, the ocean, the fields and the valleys.
They serve a noble cause. They become food to other creatures, great and small.
The mango fruit you are enjoying now came from a tree whose roots reached deep into the earth. Without your knowledge, a rat may have died nearby; its body decaying with the passage of time; and when the last rain came, all the rat’s elements melded with the soil and became a rich fertilizer for the mango.
Does that make you a rat?
The rat elements have all been processed. The mango you are eating is clean.
I don’t fear the implication of the sinking of the Stars where fish is concerned.
I will continue to eat fish and honor the victims of the Stars.
