- MANILA: The Philippines has launched a new campaign promoting tobacco — not for smoking but for fish farming, a government tobacco agency official said Thursday.
Over six months, about 400 fish-farmers in the northern coastal province of La Union will be using "tobacco dust" to kill mollusks and other predators that prey on fish, said Rex Teoxon of the National Tobacco Administration.
"We are going to train the fisher folk and the whole community on sustainable aquaculture using the tobacco dust," said Teoxon, head of the agency's corporate planning department. The drive is part of an effort to find alternative uses for the crop in the face of the global anti-smoking campaign.
The dust, made of pulverized and processed waste tobacco leaves is a safer alternative to the "long-banned, highly-toxic chemicals" that the fish farmers have been using, Teoxon said.