From China, The Future of Fish

(page 3 of 6)

Tilapia is especially well-suited to American tastes. "Tilapia fulfills a need for a large portion of the population that doesn't like their fish tasting 'fishy,' " says chef Rick Moonen, owner of Rick Moonen's RM seafood restaurant at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas and author of the 2008 cookbook Fish Without a Doubt. Pollock remains slightly more popular, as measured by per-capita consumption. That's misleading, though, since pollock caught off the coast of Alaska is ground up by McDonald's (MCD) and other fast-food chains and turned into fish sandwiches and nuggets; few people go to their local supermarket or Ruby Tuesday (RT) looking to have pollock for dinner. Tilapia has gained in popularity because one fillet by itself can be a main course. It's what Decker and others in the fish business call a "center-of-the-plate" fish. "Tilapia," Decker says, "has a huge future."

Given the record of products made in China—milk tainted with melamine, toys with lead, toothpaste with the poisonous chemical diethylene glycol—many Americans may not welcome that future. The U.S. imported $5.2 billion worth of food from China in 2008, with aquaculture products accounting for 41 percent. A report last year from the U.S. Agriculture Dept.'s Economic Research Service called into question Chinese safety standards for farm-raised fish and seafood. "Fish are often raised in ponds where they feed on waste from poultry and livestock," the report said. Meanwhile, environmentalists are concerned about the impact of China's fish farms, as water filled with tilapia feces is flushed from the ponds. They also worry about the invasive nature of the species in the U.S. (Last year in Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish, for example, officials used poison to kill off tilapia in the area's canals and ditches.) "In theory there is quite a lot of regulation in place," says Pete Bridson, aquaculture research manager at the Seafood Watch program in Monterey, who traveled to China last year to visit tilapia farms. "But the environmental side of the regulation is not enforced very well."

A global aquaculture industry dominated by China worries Mike Picchietti, president of Regal Springs Tilapia, a company based in Bradenton, Fla., that operates tilapia farms in Indonesia, Honduras, and Mexico, and is a supplier to Costco (COST). For instance, he says Chinese farmers save money using fish feed only when the tilapia are bigger. When they're still young, he says, farmers toss animal waste in the ponds and allow the tilapia to feed on the algae bloom that follows. "They're able to cut their feed costs because they're able to use manure," he fumes. Raised-in-China tilapia are therefore much cheaper, according to Picchietti. "The Chinese are able to use cowshit," he says, "and I can't." Chinese tilapia growers deny Picchietti's claim.

As the sun sets and people elsewhere in the city are heading home for dinner, at Guangdong Evergreen's processing plant near Zhanjiang, employees are gathered near the loading dock, preparing to start their shifts. Trucks are arriving with thousands of freshly harvested tilapia, and the fish need to be killed and processed quickly to ensure they are as fresh as possible before going into the deep freezer. Guangdong Evergreen has made agreements with farmers to buy their harvest-ready tilapia for processing. This factory is where fish from farmer Chen Haiping's ponds will meet their maker.

For workers and visitors alike, entering the plant is no simple procedure. They must first change into a head-to-toe white suit, making sure to take off all watches, rings, and jewelry, and put on a face mask. After washing their hands thoroughly, visitors walk through a pool of disinfectant and then into the plant itself.

Business Exchange

Track and share business topics across the Web.