GRAFTON, Ill. (AP) — An investor said Thursday a planned Asian carp processing plant could fire up early next year, aggressively harvesting the invasive, ecologically threatening species from two of the nation’s biggest inland rivers that converge nearby.
Word of the $5.4-million venture headed by Ben Allen’s American Heartland Fish Products LLC was ballyhooed in this 700-resident town, located about 40 miles northeast of St. Louis. Regional leaders, state lawmakers and a Chinese contingent of investors attended an announcement celebration in a park by the Mississippi and Illinois rivers.
American Heartland already appears to have firm footing, having landed a three-year deal to supply 35 million pounds of carp to a client in China, where the fish is popular. The plant also would market fish meal and fish oil.
Given the plant’s potential of several dozen jobs, “this is good for the whole region economically, and it gets rid of the damned fish,” a smiling Democratic state Sen. Bill Haine from nearby Alton told The Associated Press.
Asian carp were imported decades ago to clear fish ponds and sewage treatment lagoons in the Deep South of unwanted vegetation or grubs. They migrated up the Mississippi and Illinois rivers and are poised to invade the Great Lakes, where scientists say they could out-compete native fish for food.
The federal government has spent more than $100 million on an electric barrier and other steps to keep them out. Bighead and silver carp are a particularly serious threat because they eat plankton — microscopic plants and animals that are essential components of aquatic food webs.
The investors in the Grafton plant — on three bluff-top acres rezoned and annexed by the city — have said the carp are popular among Asian consumers, but because many Asian waterways are highly polluted, there is a large demand for carp caught in U.S. waters. Allen also said the farm-raised carp that China relies on lacks the wild taste of river species.
“What they’re considering is going to be a very prosperous business while taking care of a nuisance,” Grafton Mayor Tom Thompson said. “This is sort of a bright light.”
But to an Illinois-based processor of the fish, this is a challenge.
Steve McNitt, sales chief of Schafer Fisheries in Thomson, said the business last year bought 15 million pounds of the fish from commercial anglers of the Illinois and upper Mississippi rivers. The business is one of just a few in the U.S. that deal in carp.
Schafer Fisheries expanded to carp from simply dealing in catfish about a decade ago and shipped last year’s bounty to 11 countries, including China and Israel, as well as Asian markets in Los Angeles.
“I’d like to say it’s the fish of the future because it’s the ability to catch whatever you need,” McNitt told the AP this week.
His downside: The profit margin is thin at times because of costs of freight and fishermen. Also, the fish has soft flesh that can spoil quickly if not rapidly processed and packed in ice.
It’s also a grind to develop new markets, he said, and can take fisheries such as Schafer’s about a decade to do so. Carp sales also slow in the summertime, when the fish develop an earthy, less-pleasant taste linked to their seasonal feeding.
“This business is really evolving every year, and I still believe there’s a market at the end of the road,” he said, hopeful that marketing will change the carp’s image of being bony bottom-feeders unfit for American palates.
“The name ‘carp’ doesn’t have much of a following in the U.S.,” he said. “That’s always going to be a problem.”
McNitt said Schafer is trying to craft carp into hot dogs, jerky, bologna, minced product for tacos and other “value-added products that are very good and could make some money.” Schafer also has a patty maker to turn the fish meat into burgers, of sorts.
