Pagpag is a term given to left-over food, meat picked from garbage and dumps, which is then washed, cooked and sold to poor communities in Manila, Philippines.
Pagpag, These people are so poor, they're eating from the garbage
Agra/New Delhi,UPDATED: Oct 16, 2018 12:57 IST
What is pagpag?
Pagpag is a term given to left-over food, meat picked from garbage and dumps, which is then washed, cooked and sold to poor communities in Manila, Philippines. This is their daily staple food.
These communities are at a very bottom who fail to afford a single meal sometimes. Pagpag can either be eaten immediately or later.
Pagpag has now become a profitable business as sometimes, even restaurant owners buy meat from pagpag collectors.
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Dictionary meaning of pagpag: Dusted off, recycled
A bag of pagpag costs around 20P (Philippine Pesos) to P30 ($0.59 to $0.39).
Process
There are a few pagpag groups owned by different individuals, who then hire 2-3 pag pag collectors on pay as low as 6 dollars for a day.
They work day and night, roam on the streets collecting left over food from dumps and garbage.
Then they wash and remove all the dirt from the meat, wash it, remove bones and other unwanted elements, pack it in a plastic bag and sell it to their potential clients.
A cook in a restaurant in Tondo, Manila prepares pagpag in traditional Filipino cooking, such as pagpag la kaldereta or adobo, with the mixture of the leftover chicken from Jollibee and KFC as the main ingredient.
This shows the state of extreme hunger in the Philippines. As per the Bordon Project, 6.5 per cent of Metro Manila lives below the poverty line.
Health hazards
The dumps from where this food is picked up are often seen filled with rodents, rats. So, health risks include ingestion of poisons, toxins, and food-borne illnesses.
The National Anti-Poverty Commission has warned time and again against eating pagpag because of the threat of malnutrition and diseases such as Hepatitis A, typhoid, diarrhoea, and cholera.
However, a pagpag vendor claims that no one has ever died from eating pagpag food.
As more poor communities are going towards pagpag, its an alarming situation for the government.
What do people think?
Everyone who is consuming this food knows where is it from and they're not afraid to even feed it to a one-year-old baby. To those living hand-to-mouth, they have no other choice and pagpag is better than nothing at all.
"With the kind of life we live, this helps a lot. When you buy a bag worth a few pesos, you can already feed one whole family," one slum resident told Reuters.
All in all, consumption of food from the garbage is really hazardous to health.
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The government has addressed the issue and developing several policies to stop the rise of pagpag.
After CNN reported about pagpag in 2012, the reality about problems of hunger in the Philippines was brought to the world's attention. Since then, many media houses/YouTubers have made different documentaries on pagpag.
Also read: 4 ways you can help achieve #ZeroHunger: Pledge this World Food Day
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Published By:
Aysha
Published On:
Oct 16, 2018
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