American catfish industry launches ad campaign to curb Chinese imports
TV commercials demonise catfish imports from China and Vietnam, which it is claimed are flooding the US market
The simmering trade war between the US and China has shifted to the catfish industry, as American farmers claim that cheap, substandard catfish imported from China is undermining their $ 4bn domestic business.
The battle over the bottom-feeding fish is giving lobbyists a new populist front in the campaign to cap trade surpluses with China.
Two groups, Catfish Farmers of America (CFA) and the Catfish Institute, are claiming that Chinese and Vietnamese catfish fillets are tainted with pollutants and antibiotics. The institute is calling for country of origin labels on catfish, and the farmers’ body wants the Obama administration to inspect all imports.
With 13,000 direct employees and $ 4bn (£2.6bn) in annual revenues, the industry has muscle to take its grievances to the airwaves. A commercial running on the CNN and Fox television networks asks provocatively: “Did you know that only 2% of imported seafood is inspected?” and concludes: “Make your family’s health and safety your number-one concern.”
A second ad shows a man disguised as a Chinese catfish making kung-fu moves on unsuspecting housewives and knocking over a dinner table.
“The White House has had more than two years to enforce a law that could provide important food safety protections for American consumers,” Joey Lowery, president of the CFA, said.
US catfish farmers may be able to count on residual public sympathy extended to shrimp farmers in the Gulf of Mexico affected by the BP oil spill.
But its aggressive tactics may end up backfiring, warns the industry journal Seafood Source. It said of the CFA’s ads: “[A] faux food safety scare is the crown jewel in a manipulative operation filled with destructive tactics that will cause collateral damage to many parts of the seafood community.”
The catfish industry, centred in Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana and Alabama, claims it has hit hard times largely because of cheaper Asian fish flooding the market. Critics say safety claims against Chinese imports are nothing less than manipulative.
A seafood industry trade body, the National Fisheries Institute (NFI), described the TV commercials as “filled with half-truths and hypocrisy”. The NFI president, John Connelly, said: “Claiming this is anything other than a trade issue is laughable.”
The regulation of seafood imports is regarded as one of the most effective public safety systems in the US, SeafoodSource notes.
It adds: “So, CFA members can’t make ends meet but they can scrape together hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce and air TV spots that bash imports?”
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