Patis
(Fish sauce)

Reporter: Cesar Apolinario Different tastes for different people for different cultures. For a country like the Philippines, unlikely ingredients can be quite a hit! Fish sauce or patis in Filipino is made from the drippings of salted fish. With its unique salty flavor it is widely patronized by Filipinos worldwide as food flavor enhancer as well as a sauce for a variety of dishes. And in Navotas, Manila, ‘patis’ is what puts food on their plate. When you reach Navotas, the air immediately gives out a distinguished aroma of fish. Having one of the biggest fish ports in the country, fishing and any other delicacies out of this is the main source of living. Big and small entrepreneurs have made their way to venture on this century-old sauce, and Reporters Notebook (RN) headed by Cesar Apolinario explores the corners of Navotas City to find the best but the dirtiest patis? Since the making of patis is easy, it has crawled onto the houses of the residents, making it a lucrative backyard business. RN investigates if the process is as fishy as it smells. The team visits three houses that sells unbranded patis at their backyard and documents there unsanitized method, from extracting drippings to bottling their products. In one area, a man uses an old shabby T-shirt as substitute for a strainer as he transfers the finish product into a recycled bottle. He admitted that at times it was unavoidable that small insects such as cockroaches or flies fell into their merchandise. In yet another house RN was astonished to find an owner nonchalant of cockroaches biding their time around his fish drippings, he actually believed that the pests will not dare to enter the big container since, as he said will die from "too much salt"! RN’s further inquiry revealed that none of the three houses have a permit to operate and sell their products. The Sanitation Department of Navotas has aired their effort to track them down and closed them permanently, but needless to say, probably thousands of bottles have been sold by these careless proprietors. Good and fast profit can be anybody’s tea, but negligence should never be, especially when people’s health may be at jeopardy.