Chả Cá Mè Thiên Nhiên: Sản Vật Bất Ngờ Của Hoa Kỳ (In Vietnamese)

Hầu hết sản phẩm cá nước ngọt trên thị trường hiện nay đến từ nguồn cá nuôi. Khác biệt với cá biển, điều kiện sinh trưởng tự nhiên ở sông hồ không đủ để đáp ứng nhu cầu đánh bắt quy mô với số lượng lớn.

Khi nói đến sản phẩm từ cá nuôi, quan tâm đặt ra về vệ sinh nuôi trồng thủy sản, thức ăn nhân tạo, và kiểm soát mầm bệnh bằng vaccine. Dư lượng hóa chất này có thể tồn đọng trong sản phẩm phải được cơ quan USDA kiểm soát. Sản phẩm được chế từ cá hoang dã được miễn tuân thủ quy định này vì đã được chứng minh nguồn gốc thiên nhiên lành mạnh không có sự can thiệp của nền tảng công nghiệp hóa thức ăn trước đó.

Nguồn Cá Nước Ngọt Hoang Dã của Hoa Kỳ

Chỉ có ở Hoa Kỳ, dọc theo dòng sông Mississippi, nguồn cá nước ngọt đang mở ra một thế giới mới. Cá mè trắng, được du nhập từ những năm 1960 để cân bằng nguồn rong tảo phù du, nay trở thành vấn nạn với sự mất kiểm soát về sinh sản, có tiềm năng đe dọa sinh thái khu vực Ngũ Đại Hồ.

Cá mè là loại cá nước ngọt có chất lượng cao ở thị trường Đông Á. Người Trung Quốc đã thuần hóa cá mè hàng ngàn năm trước qua phương thức nuôi nhốt trong ao hồ và được mệnh danh một trong Tứ Đại Gia Ngư. Ngoài lợi ích dinh dưỡng và giá trị kinh tế, cá mè sông bơi lội trong điều kiện tự do nếu đạt kích thước lớn được coi là đặc sản. Cá mè nặng trên 10 kg thì thịt rất khó tồn tại ở các con sông Trung Quốc cũng như Việt Nam. Vì hiệu quả kinh tế, cá mè nuôi nhốt thường không đạt tiêu chuẩn trưởng thành đã phải xuất hồ. Chúng chỉ nặng khoảng 5 kg sau 4 năm nuôi nhốt ở trại cá.

Trong lúc đó tại dòng sông Mississippi loại cá này có thể đạt được trọng lượng lên đến 30 kg hoàn toàn không có sự can thiệp nào của con người. Quần thể này được ví như "heo rừng dưới nước" mà chỉ Hoa Kỳ mới để dư thừa nguồn tài nguyên thiên thiên đến như vậy.Chính phủ các tiểu bang dọc sông đang triển khai biện pháp cực đoan, từ lưới điện tử đến mở đất làm nghĩa địa để chôn cá, tuy nhiên, các dự án này đều không thực chất và đối mặt với chi phí đáng kể lên đến hàng trăm triệu Mỹ kim.

Mỹ Vị Hoa Kỳ

Nguồn lợi từ cá mè trắng Mississippi hấp dẫn những người mạo hiểm. John Crilly và Lan Chi Lưu (người Mỹ gốc Việt) đến từ Louisiana thậm chí đã lập xưởng sản xuất và tạo ra món chả cá mè FIN, được coi là độc đáo từ nguồn cá mè hoang dã. Món chả cá này được ví như món giò chả làm bằng thịt heo rừng. Do không có tác động nhân tạo nào trên dòng nguyên liệu, chả cá mè sông Mississippi được xem là sản phẩm lành mạnh trên cả sản phẩm hữu cơ (organic). Để làm được loại chả này, người ta chỉ dùng hai thăn thịt trắng của nhưng con cá mè đã nặng trên 8 kg (có những còn cá mè nặng trên 40 kg cũng chỉ để làm nên món chả cá này), đã đạt chuẩn thành thục khi trưởng thành. Loại thịt trắng chỉ chiếm khoảng 15% trọng lượng cơ thể là thứ thịt không mùi tanh, có thể ăn sống được. Giá trị dinh dưỡng của loại thịt cá hoang dã bỗng dưng trở thành món quà tặng khiến nhiều quốc gia mong muốn trong đó có cả Việt Nam. Do chưa có đủ nền công nghiệp xử lý phụ phẩm, công ty Chả Cá Mè FIN Gourmet trong thời điểm này đành phải bỏ đi 85% phế liệu của cá.

Trong lúc đó, một người Mỹ gốc Hoa khác đã lập công ty Two Rivers Fisheries để xử lý toàn bộ con cá để trở thành bột cá, nguồn làm thức ăn cho động vật.

Mở rộng việc chế biến cá mè hứa hẹn mở ra nguồn thu nhập và cơ hội việc làm cho cộng đồng. Doanh nghiệp như FIN Gourmet đã chế biến cá mè thành sản phẩm cao cấp, và nhiều doanh nghiệp khác đang khám phá nguồn tài nguyên độc đáo của Hoa Kỳ.

Hứa Hẹn Tương Lại

Lợi ích kinh tế lan rộng ra thị trường quốc tế. Trước đây, Trung Quốc cũng có ý định kiểm soát ngư trường Mississippi, nhưng họ phải đối mặt với khó khăn khi điều động ngư dân. Các doanh nghiệp khác vẫn tiếp tục sáng tạo để khai thác nguồn cá lớn có tỉ lệ dầu cá và chất lượng thịt thương phẩm đang tụ tập nhiều ở các phụ lưu hoang dã. Họ tập trung vào sản phẩm cao cấp như phi lê cá mè không xương, surimi và nhiều sản phẩm chế biến khác, để tăng giá trị và thu hút khách hàng.

Người gốc Việt gốc Hoa không chỉ ăn cá mè mà còn biến chúng thành những sản phẩm độc đáo và ngon miệng, tạo ra cơ hội kinh doanh mới cho cộng đồng.

Chả Cá Mè hiện được bán giới hạn trong các siêu thị Á Đông ở các thành phố có đông người Việt. Để bảo vệ giá trị thương phẩm thuộc tính thiên nhiên hoang dã, công ty FIN Gourmet kiên trì quy cách "Không Phụ Gia - Không Bột Ngọt". Sản phẩm có thể tìm thấy trên mạng lưới Mỹ Vị Hoa Kỳ www.myvihoaky.com

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Can You Eat Asian Carp? Yes. And You Should.

We spend millions trying to eradicate Asian carp, but they're also delicious

By Boyce Upholt

Nearly a decade ago, John Crilly, a psychiatrist and academic living in New Orleans, read an article that changed his life. It was about a local chef who had begun cooking one of the most reviled species in America—silver carp, commonly known as Asian carp.

The presence of silver carp in the Mississippi dates back to the 1960s, when scientists in Arkansas brought a few different species of Asian carp into the country to see if they might offer a chemical-free way to clean algae out of fish ponds. When funding for the experiment dried up, the fish were released to the waterways and swiftly began outcompeting local fish. Today Asian carp—mostly bighead, silver, and grass carp—make up 90 percent of the biomass in parts of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.

In China, Asian carp have been farmed and eaten for over a thousand years, and a certain kind of entrepreneur saw the spread of the Asian carp as an opportunity. In the 2010s, a burst of carp-focused fish processors sprouted along the Mississippi River system—often accompanied by breathless press coverage about their potential economic impact.

Crilly, though, wasn’t just thinking economic impact. He and another academic, an endocrinologist named Lanchi Luu, did their fieldwork in rural Louisiana. As a way of giving back, they had started a nonprofit, the Community Empowerment Services Agency, that sought to improve economic opportunities for some of the populations they worked with, like immigrant shrimpers. Processing carp seemed like a good source of work. Neither of them had any food industry experience—nor any experience fishing—but together they set out to learn the business.

They soon hit up against the same challenge that has bedeviled other carp-focused businesses: these fish have a series of Y-shaped bones running through their middle, which makes them notoriously difficult to process into the kind of products that Americans are used to eating, like fish sticks, fish patties, and boneless fillets. Crilly and Luu hand-cut thousands of carp, looking for the optimal technique for harvesting boneless fillets. They named the new business FIn Gourmet, short for “Fish Innovation.”

***

The next step was finding a buyer. The most obvious market was overseas. Many of the fish processing plants handling Asian carp were Chinese-owned. They treated carp as a simple commodity: catch it, fillet it, freeze it, send it out. Luu and Crilly followed a similar business model; they outbid a rival company and won a contract to ship carp to the Dominican Republic. But they struggled to make a profit. “The margins, it turned out, were so small,” Luu said. They were advised to try other undiscerning markets: prison systems, maybe, or emergency food kits.

Instead, they decided to create high-value products that could be priced accordingly. “This is a tremendous fish,” Crilly said. Carp have an abundance of healthy Omega-3 fatty acids, and because they are vegetarians, they have lower levels of toxins, like mercury, that accumulate in species that eat higher on the food chain.

Their boneless carp fillets, the results of those long fish-chopping sessions, have since been served everywhere from the James Beard House in New York City to the White House. Fillets, though, make up a small portion of FIn’s profit. Their biggest sellers are products made from surimi, a minced fish paste that is a staple ingredient in many parts of Asia. Luu began using surimi to make Vietnamese-style fish cakes and hit on an unusual distribution site: nail salons, where many Vietnamese staff were hungry for healthy, familiar food. FIn began distributing through Asian grocers in Atlanta, selling fish scraps to high-end pet food manufacturers, and manufacturing its own pet treats.

This approach proved to be key. A four-pound fish might cost the company $5, says Luu. If it is sold whole, or processed only for filets, the profit would be around 40 cents per fish. Developing a diverse product line meant that the entire fish could be sold in one form or another and could bring in more than $50.

Their enthusiasm for carp processing quickly eclipsed their passion for academia. As researchers, Luu said, they were “always taking information, and never giving back.” It felt very different to be creating jobs, and selling healthy and sustainable food.

Crilly and Luu moved to the small town of Paducah, Kentucky, in order to be closer to a steady supply of fish and fishermen, and opened a processing facility in a former barbecue shack The Freight House, Paducah’s sole farm-to-table restaurant has served “Kentucky Silver Carp” since the day it opened in 2015. “Once anybody tries it, they are completely changed,” says chef Sara Bradley. “The trick is just to get them to eat it.”

***

When I visited the processing plant recently, FIn’s team of processors talked and laughed as they filleted the day’s catch and scraped carcasses clean. Buckets of fish guts stood in the corners. I asked Jessica Pastor-Perez, FIn’s general manager, if her evident satisfaction in her job came from knowing she was solving an ecological problem.

More meaningful than that, she said, was the fact that the crew were all second-chance employees. Crilly and Luu make it a practice to reach out to drug court and rehab programs so that they can hire workers who might otherwise struggle to find employment. Pastor-Perez knows from experience, as someone with a criminal record, just how much a solid job can mean. “I have a college degree,” she said. “Finding a job where I can utilize that in this small town was hard.”

The crew can work through 4,000 pounds of fish in a day, if necessary. That makes the company small compared to others in the business: Schafer Fisheries has been selling carp since 2006 out of a small river town in northern Illinois, and reports sales of 10 to 15 million pounds per year—most of which is shipped to China. Two Rivers Fisheries, based out of Wickliffe, Kentucky, will sell more than 3 million pounds this year, according to operations manager Jeff Smith. Next year, Smith is forecasting sales of 8 million pounds. Two Rivers focuses not on value-added products, but whole raw fish, processed in various combinations: headed, scaled, gutted. Around half of their product goes overseas, to 11 different countries.

Smith noted the high cost of those shipments—often 25 cents per pound. But selling domestically is difficult, too, he said. “The problem with the American market is they do not want to deal with getting the bones out of it.”

One of the biggest challenges for Fin, Schafer, and Two Rivers is finding enough fishermen. Commercial river fishing is a dwindling industry along many parts of the Mississippi and Ohio, and I understood at least one reason why, after joining a fisherman on a Mississippi lake on a frigid December morning. Much of the morning was spent simply untangling carp, buffalo, and catfish from gill nets. The winds were harsh, and when the fish landed in the metal-bottomed boat, they sent up blood and slime and cold river water.

Two Rivers offers flashy bonuses to fishermen who sell to them regularly—like a Ford F150 pick-up truck. Crilly and Lu have their own strategy: the more fish someone brings in, they higher per pound cost they are willing to pay. FIn pays more than anyone else for carp, says Crilly, but their standards are exacting—the fish must be large, iced, and well-cared for.

Some companies expect fishermen to deliver their own catch. Crilly sees this mentality as a bad fit for a rural industry that is just getting off the ground. Instead, he spends a lot of time on the road, picking up the day’s catch, and driving it back to Kentucky. “We do whatever it takes to get the fish,” he said. As the market for Asian carp expands, FIn plans to pay more—producing a kind of feedback loop that helps everyone.

None of this has stopped the federal government from spending around $260 million a year on attempts to keep Asian carp from migrating further north. An electric barrier across the Chicago Canal was installed to keep them from moving into the valuable Great Lakes fishery, but grass carp have already been found in the lakes, and water samples show DNA traces of other carp varieties.

In Illinois, fishermen receive a bounty for catching as many carp as possible. In places, the bounties have reduced carp populations by as much as 93 percent, but most of that catch is thrown away because it is not kept in food-safe conditions. Businesses like Schafer Fisheries complain that programs like this waste federal tax dollars on a problem that private industry could solve on its own—while making it harder for those same businesses to find fishermen they can work with.

Meanwhile, says Paul Hartfield, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, some scientists worry that the growing market for carp will lead to laws that will try to prevent the carp from being overfished. But he doubts that even commercial fishing could overfish Asian carp, which reproduce and travel quickly. “Wouldn’t that be nice!” he wrote, by email. “If we could fish them to that extent!”

In case carp eradication efforts do work too well, FIn has researched other invasive species that might work in their recipes. But Luu, like Hartfield, is doubtful that the carp can be eliminated from the rivers. “You must adapt and use it as a resource,” she said. “It’s here to stay.”

Which is why FIn’s employees sometimes wear t-shirts emblazoned with a new name for this invader. “American Carp,” they say.

SIERRA CLUB: Can You Eat Asian Carp?

Boyce Upholt is a freelance writer based in the Mississippi Delta. His work has appeared in the Believer, the Atlantic, and the New Republic. He is currently working on a book about the Mississippi River and what we’ve done to it.

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The Lure of Asian Carp: Turning a Pest into Gold

By May Zhou in Wickliffe, Kentucky | China Daily |

Justin Irwin and James Berry drove their boat on Barkley Lake in western Kentucky, looking for Asian carp.

It didn't take them long to spot a school of fish. Stopping the boat, Berry started feeding a 600-foot-long vertical net into the water as Irwin maneuvered the boat to eventually form the net into a big circle.

With net in place, they then ran the boat in a circle, banging the hull with a wooden stick.

Immediately, carp started jumping out of the water and splashing back in.

A few lucky ones managed to jump outside of the net to live another day; some dived deep enough to get away.

When the flurry subsided, Berry began to pull the net up and pick carp out one by one.

Repeating this process one or two more times, they would have enough of a load to deliver to the nearby Kentucky Fish Center owned by Angie Yu, who also operates Two Rivers Fisheries, the largest Asian carp processor and exporter in the US.

Berry and Irwin, half-brothers originally from Washington, came to Kentucky to fish Asian carp in November last year.

Justin Irwin (left) and James Berry deliver carp to the Kentucky Fish Center in Eddyville. The average weight of the fish is 5.5 to 6.8 kilograms. The largest seen at Two Rivers Fisheries was nearly 47 kg. [Photo by May Zhou/China Daily]

Irwin is a commercial fisherman who has fished all over the world, from America to Africa, most recently in Alaska during the summer. For three months a year, he would work 20 to 22 hours a day off Alaska. The pay was good enough to cover a year's worth of living expenses, but the work was extremely hard.

He read an article on the internet one day about commercial fishing in Kentucky and Asian carp and immediately got interested.

"As a commercial fisherman, my interest is to fish up as much as I can," Irwin said.

Irwin and his family live in Costa Rica, his brother Berry was in Tennessee running heavy equipment for a living. The opportunity presented by Asian carp drew them both to Kentucky.

The brothers ran into some difficulties at first. They started with the wrong size net and couldn't catch a single fish. "We traded a car for a new net, and the rest is history," said Berry.

Their average haul of a day is between 3,000 and 7,000 pounds. Last month, they delivered almost 100,000 pounds. That's $16,000 earning between them, not counting the 5-cent subsidy from the state of Kentucky.

"We usually work 10 to 12 hours a day, seven days a week. If we can fish, we fish," said Berry.

Carp prices are cheap compared to other commercial fish, but the ease of catching large quantities of them makes up for the price difference, and it evens out, they said.

Jiang Huiying drops a net into the water while fishing for Asian carp on Barkley Lake, Kentucky. [Photo by May Zhou/China Daily]

Irwin has already turned down a job in Alaska for the 2019 summer. Catching carp in Kentucky is a much easier life.

"Here the weather is warmer, the environment is more comfortable, and I get to sleep in my own bed at the end of the day," he said, adding that the earnings are comparable to what he would make in Alaska.

Irwin and Berry make decent money catching Asian carp, a fish that is so abundant in rivers and lakes that it has become a serious ecological problem for states like Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Illinois and Kentucky.

Ron Brooks, fisheries director at Kentucky's Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, said that the Asian carp are disrupting $1 billion worth of recreational and commercial businesses in western Kentucky alone.

"The Asian carp dominates the bio mass, they create problems for commercial and recreational fishing, boating and water skiing. It puts a lot of new business owners off when they talk to us about opening a business in Kentucky," Brooks said.

In some waterways, carp are so abundant that they jump out of the water into boats, sometimes hitting boaters and creating a nuisance. The massive schools of carp also present hazards to water skiers on popular recreational lakes. Commercial fishermen after other types of fish have to try hard not to catch them.

Asian carp are currently having an negative impact on estimated $7 billion various businesses in the US.

But He Lining, development manager at Two Rivers Fisheries, says Asian carp are not a problem, but an opportunity.

According to He, who is writing a book about Asian carp, the fish was introduced to the US by scientists in the late 1960s and early 1970s as an easy and cheap way to treat waste water.

However, once the Asian carp got into the river and lake systems, they flourished, and decades later, their populations have grown to the degree of creating an ecological disaster, crowding out other fish species competing for the rich food sources in the waterways.

"Asian carp is an important fish. It's an incredible fish and has been domesticated in Asia for more than 2,400 years," He said. "We consume more Asian carp than any other category of fish — Asian carp counts for 10 percent of global seafood consumption. We eat more silver carp than tuna and salmon combined.

"It is a problem here, but it's not garbage; it's a gold mine," He said.

In China, processed Asian carp is a $10 billion business, he said. "If we can save that $7 billion business by creating another $7 billion industry, that will be even better."

And that is exactly what the newly established International Fisheries Industrial Park is trying to do.

Officially opened on April 12 in Wickliffe, a small town of 700 people, the park is a private-public partnership aimed at reducing local Asian carp populations while creating a zerowaste food-production chain.

Angie Yu (left), the Kentucky Fish Center owner, speaks at the opening ceremony of the International Fisheries Industrial Park in Wickliffe, Kentucky. [Photo by May Zhou/China Daily]

The park is the brainchild of Angie Yu, founder and president of Two Rivers Fisheries.

Yu came up with the idea of cashing in on the battle against Asian carp, and in 2012 founded Two Rivers Fisheries in Wickliffe, Kentucky, just south of where the Mississippi and Ohio rivers converge.

Yu has a knack for turning "waste" into profit. She once developed a business of turning discarded crab and shrimp shells into glucosamine, a popular supplement used to treat joint pain.

In Iceland, where lumpfish were being discarded after their roe was removed for caviar, she exported the leftover fish to China.

Two Rivers Fisheries began processing and exporting carp in 2013. In 2018, the company processed about 2.6 million pounds of carp. This year, they processed 1.3 million pounds in the first quarter. Since starting operations, the company has processed a total of 10 million pounds of carp.

Two Rivers Fisheries is now the largest exporter of Asian carp in the United States and the No. 1 fish exporter by volume in Kentucky.

As the state was looking for innovative ways to attack the Asian carp problem, Kentucky awarded Yu the state's first-ever fish house contract in the fall of 2018. According to the deal, Yu's Kentucky Fish Center will buy Asian carp at a guaranteed price of 14 cents per pound, plus 5 cents per pound subsidy from the government.

All fish at the center will be auctioned off to interested buyers domestically or internationally. The sale will be overseen by Kentucky's Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources.

The state provided a secured $734,000 loan for fixed assets to help the fish center set up operations. Additional incentives will be awarded every year based on performance.

The fish center needs to reach certain goals: get 5 million pounds of Asian carp out of Kentucky waters in 2019 and increase that amount gradually to 20 million pounds a year by 2024. If those goals are met, the loan will be forgiven.

The entire program will cost Kentucky about $4 million. The government estimates that if the program were run by the state, it would cost $3.5 million a year and yield less carp.

The industrial park sits on 64 acres in Ballard County and is set up to make use of the carp acquired by the fish center. There are 12 tracts of land up for sale inside the park.

On opening day, eight tracts were already claimed, with only four left up for grabs. Most of the investors were from China.

Jiang Chenguang, an internet businessman from Guangxi, has set up United Fisheries Group to process carp into fish balls and fish cakes for export to China. Two Rivers Foods will process smoked fish — it has already shipped a smoker to the site.

Lakeside City is set up to process carp into salted fish. Investor Jiang Chuming will get into the net business. The existing Eco Fish hires fishermen to harvest carp, process fish and recycle fish waste into fertilizer.

Hotel and catering businessman Zhu Hongwei from Jiangsu province made the decision on opening day to buy one track for food processing. "I will decide to process fi sh into exactly what later," Zhu said. Investor An Fengjie bought a track and, like Zhu, has yet to decide what exactly to do in the carp bonanza.

Xu Hao runs a successful environmental business and specializes in recycling waste materials in Yunnan province. He registered Novaland Group in Kentucky to turn all the discarded fish parts into fertilizer for the US market. This helps to complete the fish processing chain and make the park waste free.

Novaland Group is Xu's first investment in the US. His estimated total investment is around $500,000. "We will solve the industrial park's garbage problem by eliminating the fish odor and recycling the fish waste into fertilizer to make the park a healthy and safe place," Xu said.

The industrial park is getting a warm welcome from local officials, many of whom attended the opening ceremony. Ballard County Judge Todd Cooper praised Yu for "taking lemons and making them into lemonade".

James Berry lands a carp on Barkley Lake, Kentucky. [Photo by May Zhou/China Daily]

Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development Commissioner Erran Persley praised Yu's dedication in bringing a cluster of fish industries into the area.

"As we are negotiating at the federal level, the important thing is to make sure relationships between provinces and states keep moving and business relationships keep growing. This project is an excellent example of the fact that at the sub-nation level, we can come together and make business happen between our two nations," Persley said.

Kentucky's fisheries director Brooks has high hopes that the park's incentive program will help reduce the Asian carp population, and commercial fishermen should not worry about their prospects as far as Asian carp are concerned.

"As we fish them down, we will help the industry to go to the rivers. There are so many carp that we are not able to fish them all up in our lifetime," said Brooks.

Currently there are more than 40 commercial fishermen dedicated to catching Asian carp in western Kentucky. The long-term prospects offered by the overgrowth of Asian carp are exactly why James Berry and Justin Irwin think that their job is secure until they want to retire.

"We have a big dream," said Berry. "We want a bigger boat. We confidently think we can do anywhere from 30,000 to 50,000 pounds a day with a purse seine (net) because of what we see out there. The schools of fish are massive; the problem is to get around them."

A purse seine is a large wall of net with floats along the top and a lead line threaded through the bottom. Once a school of fish is located, a skiff encircles the school with the net. The lead line is then pulled in to close the net on the bottom, preventing fish from escaping by swimming downward.

"The way we are fishing now, we are setting the net off at our bow," said Berry. "We are missing fish because we are not going fast enough."

Berry said they are saving up and plan to reinvest 100 percent of their money in equipment. A bigger capacity boat would also reduce their down time. Currently, they have to deliver two to three times a day because their boat can only hold up to 3,000 pounds of fish.

"If you come in to deliver, it takes at least an hour, that's just an hour we lost off the water. The thing about the fish is that once you find them, you've got to stay on top of them. They change what they do," Berry said.

Irwin said that every day the fish seem to like different temperatures and different depths of water. They move around and have a lot of different traits. He is applying all of his fishing skills learned all over the world to find better ways to fish carp in Kentucky.

The brothers are not the only ones lured to Kentucky by Asian carp. Lin Jiantong and his wife Jiang Huiying moved from Atlanta to the area to fish Asian carp about a year ago.

The couple were working in the kitchens of Chinese restaurants for a living in Atlanta. Learning about the possibility of making a living by fishing, Lin did not hesitate to try a new lifestyle. Growing up along the coast in Fujian province, Lin knows a thing or two about fishing.

"I like it much better here. I am not working in a small and crowded space. I don't have to follow anyone's orders. It is so much nicer to be in the open water with fresh air. If I don't feel like working, I take a day off. It's great," Lin said.

The couple are not catching as much carp as Irwin and Berry, but Lin said they make money equivalent to what they made in Atlanta.

MAY ZHOU CHINA DAILY

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Ballard County Welcomes Eight New Asian Carp-Related Businesses

 WKMS | By Derek Operle

WKMS/Derek Operle

What was considered a threat to western Kentucky’s aquatic environments is turning out to be a net gain for Ballard County. The area celebrated the imminent arrival of eight new businesses related to Asian carp and river fish in its Kentucky International Industrial Fish Park during a ribbon cutting ceremony Tuesday at Fort Jefferson Park and Memorial Cross in Wickliffe.

These new businesses will fill out the 72-acre industrial park, joining anchor business Two River Fisheries and Novaland Group. The park will be full to the gills, with every property tract now sold. The new ventures include the River Sun Group, Two Rivers Travel, United Fisheries Group, Express Fishing and Sports, Fishing LLC, Magasam, Asian Carp Arts and Honcoop Pet Foods. All of these businesses harvest or process carp and river fish or serve to promote and market the industry.

“Angie (Yu) and her team took the lemons of the invasive carp species and made lemonade,” Ballard County Judge-Executive Todd Cooper told the crowd of 50 or so business people and county residents. “More than 25 year ago, Ballard County Fiscal Court and the Ballard County economic board partnered together and bought a 72-acre tract of property in Wickliffe … that developed into what is now known as the Kentucky International Industrial Fish Park. And a lot of work went into that park.”

WKMS

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Derek Operle

Dr. Lining He (left) translates Ballard County Judge-Executive Todd Cooper's remarks into Chinese for the visiting investors at the celebration of eight new businesses joining the Kentucky International Industrial Fish Park Tuesday.

Ballard County Economic and Industrial Development Board president/CEO Terry Simmons played a key role in the park’s origins, Cooper recalled.

“Through those partnerships that were formed, a vision was developed due to the invasive carp that started hitting the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. They knew we needed to do something to combat this species but also (wondered) are there some economic development opportunities in this arena?”

Their hunch was right. Simmons sat on the Paducah Area Community Reuse Organization (PACRO) board and he helped secure funding to develop the initial infrastructure that would act as a lure for the first business: Angie Yu’s Two Rivers Fisheries. Two Rivers would open in 2012 and provide the first local jobs in the Asian carp business.

Ballard County Economic and Industrial Development Board president/CEO Terry Simmons played a key role in the park’s origins, Cooper recalled.

“Through those partnerships that were formed, a vision was developed due to the invasive carp that started hitting the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. They knew we needed to do something to combat this species but also (wondered) are there some economic development opportunities in this arena?”

Their hunch was right. Simmons sat on the Paducah Area Community Reuse Organization (PACRO) board and he helped secure funding to develop the initial infrastructure that would act as a lure for the first business: Angie Yu’s Two Rivers Fisheries. Two Rivers would open in 2012 and provide the first local jobs in the Asian carp business.

Two Rivers Fisheries

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“We certainly have a great desire to see the Asian carp populations fished down in the lakes and in our rivers because of the detrimental impacts to sport fishing and to our boaters,” he said. “We’re doing everything that we can in our purview to promote the commercial fishing and processing of these fish.”

The KFDW is providing a subsidy of 8 cents per pound of Asian carp to commercial fisherman from the state for Asian carp and working to create a market-based solution to the Asian carp problem with the Kentucky Fish Center.

The Kentucky Fish Center, also run by Yu, is a collaboration focused on creating a constant supply of that fish to enable the establishment of a supply chain for Asian carp, allowing the easier creation of contracts between Asian carp processors and other commercial manufacturers.

Kentucky Department Of Fish And Wildlife

Many of the businesses coming to the industrial park have international investors and owners, predominantly from China and Canada. Sophia Qi, of the Chinese American Manufacturers Alliance, spoke briefly. She has helped some of these international business people navigate the waters of starting a business in west Kentucky, where they’ve found “a good environment, good people and a big market.”

Cooper says the over two decades of economic development around Asian carp in Ballard have already yielded over $10 million dollars in economic impact, but that could just be the beginning. Right now, no hard economic impact estimates exist for the industrial park, but Ballard County Economic Development executive director Hannah Chretien is expecting big things.
“The bottom line is we’re talking about eight new brick and mortar businesses that are going to have manufacturing production lines, that are going to have distribution lines, that are dealing with logistics, that are also dealing with tourism,” she told WKMS after Tuesday’s event. “It’s going to have a large impact.”

Ballard County Economic Development officials expect a full build out of all the new businesses within the next two years.

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INDUSTRIAL PARK

What was considered a threat to western Kentucky’s aquatic environments is turning out to be a net gain for Ballard County.

The area celebrated the imminent arrival of eight new businesses related to Asian carp and river fish in its Kentucky International Industrial Fish Park during a ribbon cutting ceremony Tuesday at Fort Jefferson Park and Memorial Cross in Wickliffe.

These new businesses will fill out the 72-acre industrial park, joining anchor business Two River Fisheries and Novaland Group. The park will be full to the gills, with every property tract now sold. The new ventures include the River Sun Group, Two Rivers Travel, United Fisheries Group, Express Fishing and Sports, Fishing LLC, Magasam, Asian Carp Arts and Honcoop Pet Foods. All of these businesses harvest or process carp and river fish or serve to promote and market the industry.

TG RIVER operated under Saigon Nho now owned 48-arce of the park.

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Development Authority Grant / Loan Program

Founded in early 2018, the Ballard County Economic and Industrial Development Authority (“BCEIDA”) was created as the economic development aid to the Fiscal Court. 

As a public entity, the BCEIDA’s duty is to assist the businesses of Ballard County above all else. Consisting of nine members, the board is a diverse team of civic-minded leaders with a passion for small business development and growth.

Program Goals:

The goals of the Business Assistance Grant/Loan Program are the following:
➢ Job Creation/ Retention
➢ Local Business Expansion
➢ Small Business Growth

As such, all projects submitted to the program will be considered based on their impact to the above categories.

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