Catfish

Even amid bitter political battles, buyers can find sweet deals

If you’re a buyer, farm-raised catfish has never been a sweeter deal. This summer, skinless, boneless fillets were selling for prices that averaged about $2.50 a pound — almost 50 cents a pound less than last summer. Over the past 12 months, catfish prices have been at their lowest levels since the whiskered wonder first began replacing soybeans on the Mississippi Delta in the 1970s. 

At Cahoot’s Catfish & Oyster Bar in Abilene, Texas, that translated into a price of $8.95 for all the fried catfish you could eat. Meanwhile, over in Slidell, La., $4.95 was enough for a fried catfish lunch (complete with fries, hush puppies, yam patty and a small salad) at the Triple XXX Restaurant. Catfish has also been pretty cheap at Piccadilly Cafeteria — a 200-unit chain in Baton Rouge, La. — where $7.99 on Friday, Saturday or Sunday nights gets you all the catfish your stomach can handle.

But is it really catfish that these restaurants are selling, or is it Vietnamese tra and basa?  In the case of Piccadilly, until recently it wasn’t catfish — at least as far as U.S. catfish farmers were concerned. When Piccadilly switched to Vietnamese fish last year, which it could buy for almost $1 a pound less than U.S. farm-raised catfish, the Catfish Farmers of America responded with both barrels blazing.

U.S. catfish farmers call the Vietnamese fish “no closer to a catfish than a yak is to a cow.’’ They and their powerful friends in Washington tagged an amendment onto an appropriations bill last November that changed labeling laws so that only species of catfish from the family Ictaluridae — including channel catfish farmed in the Southeast but excluding basa and tra farmed in Vietnam — can be sold simply as “catfish” in the United States.

The effort to rewrite accepted seafood nomenclature ignited a debate in the U.S. Senate. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) decried the “clever use of Latin phraseology” as “an underhanded way for catfish producers to shut out the competition” when the “ink was not dry” on a new trade agreement with Vietnam.

Arkansas Sen. Tim Hutchinson, a fellow Republican, argued that the catfish industry was merely trying to protect American consumers from “inferior Vietnamese catfish,” which he said “are often exposed to many foul and unhealthy elements in one of the most polluted watersheds in the world.” 

Sen. Phil Gramm, (R-Texas), who claims he has eaten more catfish than anyone in the Senate, disagreed.

“If it is inferior, why do restaurants buy it in such overwhelming volume?” he asked. “Do they not want people to come back to their restaurant? Are they not interested in customer loyalty?

“Restaurants are serving basa catfish because it is good catfish, people like it, and it is cheaper,” he concluded.

That’s what worries U.S. catfish farmers. Competition from Viet-namese fish has been a big drag on prices, and as far as the American producers are concerned, the deals on catfish these days are anything but sweet. 

The catfish farmers filed an antidumping suit against the Vietnamese in late June. With pond prices stuck in the 55-cent-a-pound range for almost a year — about a nickel below their cost of production — catfish farmers “are in trouble,” says one processor.

The pressure U.S. catfish farmers applied to larger chains like Piccadilly has convinced buyers to switch back to U.S. catfish. “Nobody’s happy with the price, though,” says one processor. “That’s the damage that has been done by basa.”

Supply outlook   

The supply outlook is murky. Although American farmers say they’re cutting production, the amount of catfish processed through May of this year was up almost  3 percent, to 267 million pounds.

Considering that it takes 18 months between stocking and harvest, it’s not surprising that slightly more fish are being processed. U.S. catfish production almost certainly will head south next year for the first time in the industry’s history. 

From 1998 to 2001, U.S. imports of Vietnamese catfish soared from 261 metric tons to almost 8,000 metric tons a year. While that was still relatively small compared to the 70,000 metric tons of frozen fillets produced by U.S. catfish farmers last year, the trend was definitely alarming.

Getting a handle on Vietnamese catfish imports this year is trickier since the product is no longer classified simply as catfish. According to the import trade data through May, U.S. imports of Vietnamese catfish were down 24 percent, to about 2,040 metric tons.

But U.S. imports of “frozen freshwater fish fillets” from Vietnam, most of which are believed to be basa and tra, more than doubled to 1,040 metric tons. Combining the two categories, U.S. imports were essentially flat at about 3,100 metric tons.

The Vietnamese industry, at least for the short term, will likely keep a lid on its catfish producers as it fights the antidumping claim before the U.S. International Trade Commis-sion. If the ITC decides to investigate, and if it concludes the Vietnamese have been dumping, it could impose substantial tariffs.

Then Vietnamese basa and tra would lose their price advantage, and growth in exports would come to a quick halt.

If  the ITC lets the Vietnamese off the hook, look for a rapid increase in imports of Vietnamese basa and tra. Vietnamese farmers can grow tra catfish to market size in eight months, more than twice as fast as U.S. farmers can grow channel cats.

Price trends   

As far as U.S. catfish farmers are concerned, it’s been pretty much a downhill ride lately. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in 2001, the average price paid to catfish farmers declined from 69 cents a pound in January to 55 cents a pound in December 2001, the level at which they have mostly remained.

To get the ex-processor price of skinless, boneless fillets, as a rule of thumb, you add $2 a pound to the pond price. The USDA says the average ex-processor price of fresh fillets this year has been $2.53 a pound, while frozen fillets have averaged $2.38. Some processors, though, frozen fillets have been sold for as little as $2.25 a pound by processors hoping to win back business.

Prices for whole, dressed catfish have not declined, as whole cats do not compete directly with Viet-namese product. They have held relatively steady at $1.90 to $2.15 a pound, depending on size.

The average declared value of Vietnamese catfish fillets has declined from $2 a pound in 1998 to less than $1.30 a pound early this year, as Vietnamese farmers have switched from growing basa catfish (Pangasius bocourti) to tra (P. hypothalmus), which is faster and cheaper to raise. But lately, prices for Vietnamese catfish have been climbing due to hotter-than-normal weather on the steamy Mekong Delta.

This July, importers were selling tra fillets for prices that averaged about $1.75 a pound, an increase of about 30 percent. True basa fillets  were selling for $2 to $2.25 a pound.

To figure where catfish prices are going, keep an eye on the ITC. If it throws out the catfish farmers’ suit, prices should remain relatively flat for the rest of 2002. After 2002, look for prices of U.S. catfish to increase. As long as pond prices remain below the cost of production, farmers will cut back, which will eventually lead to price increases, probably to the $2.65- to $2.75-a-pound range for fresh, skinless boneless fillets.

If the ITC decides in favor of the U.S. catfish farmers, prices will quickly increase. The price of Vietnamese catfish will depend on the amount of the tariff.  If the tariff is substantial, look for the price of U.S. catfish fillets to head back toward $3 a pound, their price before the Vietnamese began shipping product to the United States.

Buying tips

Buying U.S. catfish is pretty straightforward, with the biggest problem being the occasional off-flavor fish. To minimize this,  processors rigorously test fish they buy before they pump it out of a pond.

If you see a price on catfish that looks like a steal, be careful. The fish may be old, it might have been rejected for off flavor, or a processor may have given it an extra long soak in tripolyphosphate.

Vietnamese fish can be trickier, although many Vietnamese processors produce excellent product. Viet-namese catfish is whiter, as processors scrape away the gray, fatty flesh. The overall quality of the processing plants has improved, but some of the smaller operations still produce some marginal-quality product.

With a price spread that has been as much as $1 a pound, some U.S. catfish processors, especially those with breaded product lines, have been the best customers of the Vietnamese. It’s pretty easy to tell the difference between Vietnamese and U.S. catfish, as the Vietnamese product is considerably whiter. Basa catfish is whiter and has a more flaky texture than tra.

The lowest catfish prices of the year are normally in the summer and fall, when processing volumes are at their peak. 

Culinary notes

 Just because catfish has been cheap lately doesn’t mean you can’t get a lot for it if you dress it up a bit. The Palace Café in New Orleans charges $15.25 for Catfish Pecan Meunière, a fresh fillet of pecan-crusted catfish, pan-sautéed and then finished with Creole meunière sauce.

Award-winning Chicago chef Rick Bayless features “Bagre Pibil” for $19.95 at his Frontera GrilI. The dish is described as “farm-raised catfish marinated in Yucatecan achiote, cooked over the coals on a banana leaf with roasted green chile and tomato; served with explosive roasted habanero salsa to sprinkle on.”

Most catfish, though, is still sold fried throughout the Southeast, usually with hush puppies.

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