With just one sentence slipped into the agriculture appropriations bill last month by Mississippi Republican Sen. Thad Cochran — the usual sneak attack, no previous hearings, no public debate — the simmering U.S. catfish war against Vietnam suddenly got hot: “None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act to the Food and Drug Administration shall be used to allow
admission of fish or fish products labeled wholly or in part as ‘catfish’ unless the products are taxonomically from the family Ictaluridae.”

Translation: North American catfish like the Channel Cats grown in Cochran’s Mississippi and nearby parts of the U.S. south — are from the Ictaluridae family. The scientific name for Vietnamese catfish — popularly known as “basa” or “bocourti” catfish — is “pangasius bocourti.” Cochran’s proviso hopes to prevent “catfish” from the Mekong Delta from making further inroads into the market share of the 12,000-plus catfish folks from the Mississippi Delta (see, Watch the Bones, The Rushford Report, July 2001, page two). Americans are free to buy “basa,” if they want. But if they want real “catfish,” they now must buy American.

Cochran’s amendment certainly smells fishy from the Vietnamese vantage. Catfish, in fact, is very much a part of Vietnam’s culture, just as it is in rural parts of the United States. “If Vietnam ever got around to declaring a national fish, the catfish would be it,” observed Vietnamese-born Andrew X. Pham in Catfish and Mandala, his 1999 autobiographical account of how he became an American. Vietnam’s ambassador to the United States, Nguyen Tam Chien, has protested that the Cochran amendment “not only constitutes a unilateral act and unfair trade practice, but also is detrimental to the American consumers.”

But Catfish Row is happy with its victory. “Never trust a Catfish with a foreign accent,” proclaims an advertisement for U.S.-Farm-Raised Catfish in Supermarket News. “Those other guys probably couldn’t spell U.S. even if they tried.” The Catfish Farmers of America are considering further escalations in their war against Vietnam, such as filing an antidumping petition against the low-priced Vietnamese fish.

Before they declare that they have won the catfish war, however, the American catfish farmers might reflect upon a valuable lesson that the rest of America learned the hard way during the real Vietnam War: Beware of the perils of creeping escalation when there is neither a clear plan for victory nor an exit strategy. One way or another, the Vietnamese probably will find ways to swim around whatever trade barriers are thrown up against them.

For openers, the Cochran proviso might be vulnerable to a legal challenge, on grounds that Congress simply can’t legislate away the fact that a catfish is a catfish. It is also unclear if the FDA uses appropriated funds any-way to admit Vietnamese catfish.

Moreover, “basa” for exam-ple, might be marketed effectively in upscale restaurants in places like New York City, where sophisticated diners might prefer Vietnam’s classic Catfish in Black Bean Sauce over the American deep-fried southern version. Perhaps instead of turning to lawyers and lobbyists to market their wares, the U.S. farmers should spend their energies in more effective national marketing.

Besides, U.S. importers could point out to the Vietnamese that there is nothing to prevent them from raising their own Channel Cats.

To be sure, U.S. importers are livid that the U.S. Congress has stepped in to complicate their businesses.

“Every single segment of our industry has been hurt during the past year by deteriorating economic conditions,” declares Matt Fass, an importer from Newport News, Virginia who supplies national restaurant chains like Red Lobster, and grocers like Safeway and Winn-Dixie. “But only the domestic catfish industry has asked for laws to be passed in their favor.”

Adds Fass: “We sell Sea Bass, Black Bass, and Striped Bass — all different species. We sell Gulf Shrimp, Black Tiger Shrimp and Green Shrimp — all different species.” But now he can’t sell any catfish that aren’t raised in American waters.

Veteran Washington trade lawyer Michael Hathaway, who represents the domestic catfish industry, says that his clients sought the tough legislative fix because they have been frustrated that the U.S. government has not protected them from marketers who have passed off Vietnamese catfish as American catfish.

“The domestic industry would have been happy if the stuff had been sold as Basa Catfish,” Hathaway relates. But the lower-priced Vietnamese fish has been sold by wholesalers as “catfish,” replacing the North American species on menus, Hathaway con-tends.

Hathaway points to several sections of the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act, and also the TradeMark Act of 1946, that prohibit entry of goods marked with false descriptions or representations. He also cites section 403 of the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, which is aimed at deceptive sales of seafood — for example, like when a less expensive species is substituted for a more expensive species. There are also U.S. Customs origin marking requirements that prohibit removal or altering of markings after release from Customs.

Hathaway‘s clients complain that the problem is, the feds aren‘t much interested in enforcing these laws. “We have had no success in having the FDA enforce what it has on the books to counter consumer deception,” says Hathaway.

Hathaway also says that imported seafood must have a HACCP plan — the acronym for Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point — to ensure safe and sanitary processing of fish products. But, the lawyer points out, the FDA relies on Vietnamese assurances that they are actually doing this.

Nonsense, retorts Louisiana importer Sal Piazza, who has been selling “Cajun Boy Catfish” from Vietnam. Piazza shrugs off the howls of outrage from American catfish farmers. “Catfish is just a name like Doris or Sal. There are different kinds of catfish,” he told the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

Piazza told the Louisiana newspaper, his Vietnamese catfish that he at first thought of marketing the Vietnamese catfish at a higher price to compete with grouper. All he is doing now by selling Vietnamese catfish, Piazza says, is giving consumers a decent break at a competitive price.

One thing Piazza has in common with U.S. catfish interests is a decided lack of shyness when it comes to advertising. One marketing flier for Piazza’s Seafood World shrewdly notes that the Vietnamese “primary food source” for catfish is purchased from Cargill, “the same manufacturer of U.S. catfish feed.”

And the Vietnamese catfish, which are raised on floating cages, “can never reach or feed from the bottom to eat their own droppings, unlike U.S. fish can and do,” according to the Seafood World flier.

Actually, the Asian fish might not have to, U.S. catfish industry sources retort darkly. They point to a graphic description in Andrew Pham’s Catfish and Man-dala of catfish cages that were positioned under latrines that had been constructed a few feet above the water. As one man went about his business, Pham related, “the surface beneath the latrine began to churn, roiling with catfish.”

Louisiana’s Sal Piazza told me that he has never heard of latrine catfish, saying that the cages that he has seen in the Mekong Delta are constantly flushed with clean water.

No matter. Back in Washington, the political waters are likely to keep roiling from the residue of the Cochran amendment, which has the enthusiastic support of Senate Republicans like Trent Lott (R-MS) and Arkansas’
Tim Hutchinson.

All three Republicans voted two months ago against ratifying the U.S.-Vietnam trade bilateral accord because of catfish. The lawmakers weighed the interests of their catfish constituentsagainst the U.S. national interest in using the marketplace to assist impoverished Vietnam in its painful transition away from an economy plagued with Marxist-Leninist economics. The parochial interests won.

You could call it bottom dwelling.