Posted on 09/22/2011 12:54:09 PM PDT by Red Badger
It is a stark reminder that the Asian carp infestation that has overwhelmed stretches of river in the Mississippi River basin and is now threatening the waters of the Great Lakes isn't going to go away anytime soon: The Illinois Department of Natural Resources has hired a Louisiana chef for a made-for-media event this week to demonstrate just how good these fish can be to eat.
It's part of the Target Hunger Now campaign, a state-sponsored humanitarian effort to turn the jumbo jumping carp into "healthy, ready-to-serve meals" for the needy. The program also provides venison to the poor.
It already has provided thousands of meals to needy children and families, but this is about more than feeding the poor.
Illinois is in a protracted battle with its neighboring Great Lakes states over how to beat back the carp migrating up the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, a man-made link between the carp-infested Mississippi basin and Lake Michigan.
Neighboring states want Illinois to slam shut two navigation locks as a makeshift barrier to block the advance of the fish; Illinois contends that such a closure would do great harm to the barge industry that relies on a free-flowing canal, and that it is unnecessary because an electric barrier on the canal is keeping the carp at bay.
Not everyone is so convinced the barrier is working as advertised. Water samples taken from the 70-plus miles of canals above the barrier repeatedly have tested positive for Asian carp DNA, and in the summer of 2010, a 20-pound Asian carp was pulled from a fisherman's net about seven miles south of Lake Michigan.
Illinois officials see its eat-the-carp program as another tool to keep the fish out of Lake Michigan.
According to the Illinois DNR:
"Illinois' $15 billion-dollar shipping industry has been threatened through ongoing legal actions by neighboring Great Lakes states in an attempt to close Chicago's navigation locks. Using Asian carp as a healthy food source for food banks is a major step towards eradication of the fish in Illinois waters and protects the waterway shipping industry from forced closures of our locks and dam systems."
The Illinois DNR also hopes the program will do some good for Illinois rivers.
"The Asian carp threat also continues to have a negative impact on Illinois' commercial and sport fishing industries and tourism and leads to revenue and job loss. Asian carp are voracious eaters consuming more than 40 percent of their body weight per day in plankton," states the Illinois DNR's official description of the program.
"They compete with our native fish species for food and can quickly overtake native populations of fish in our rivers, lakes and streams. The planned overfishing program of Asian carp will help protect these multibillion dollar industries in Illinois and the Great Lakes while protecting revenues and ensuring jobs. The overfishing program for Asian carp will also provide an abundance of fish available to feed our fellow Illinoisans."
The Illinois DNR will demonstrate recipes at a dinner with chef Philippe Parola on Thursday at Christ the King Jesuit College Preparatory High School in Chicago.
Copper sulphate is one of the active ingredients in the spray they use.
with enough butter and garlic, anything can taste good
Considering farm raised talapia is fed by the poop of farm raised striped bass - I guess anything can make it to the table....
Recycling, man, recycling. Anyone with a cat with an indoor litter box, and a dog, knows about this. To the dog, it’s Tootsie Rolls.
POST OF THE DAY!!HERE IT IS.
....and pickled herring.....
Best use a cast net. You might hit somebody...........or dynamite...
Wow. A reasoned response to the “sky is falling” scenario.
The stage is now set for an inter-species survival of the fittest test.
For a generation that has been raised on the concept of effective resource competition and reproductive fitness being necessary in biological diversification, society sure has an increasing distaste for the actual expression of these concepts - in youth sports (we are ALL winners), international dominance (US is an illegitimate world power), and now, fish.
Handwringers are always predicting the end of the world as we know it. Much of science funding is based on this premise. Would be interesting to “follow the money” on this “crisis”.
Illinois wants the canal open to barge traffic so I don’t think a screen is possible.
I think they need to close the canal as well.
But they won’t. It would be MUCH better for untold numbers of people to do so but not for obama’s peeps.
We did too.
However, today it’s probably been deemed a violation of the separation of Church and State...
Separation of Church and Plate.........
Its not even really a matter of sealing the canal. Just creating a barrier between the canal and the Des Plaines river would do it. The only real through traffic is pleasure boats and most shipping is offloaded well before the river.
The whole thing shows how twisted the Obama administration is. He puts rabid environmentalists in charge then stands in the way of preventing a true environmental (and economic) threat. Funny thing is that these are the same “environmentalists” who stand in the way of safe directional drilling under the lakes for natural gas. Bush didn’t do much about it but he didn’t actively stand in the way of court fights between the states.
There’s a lot more here than meets the eye and few people outside the issue have paid enough attention to really understand it. The fact is that there won’t be any feeding the poor on fish that can only be commercially sold on a very limited basis. There won’t be a vast commercial fishery for the same reason. Besides, only a moron would destroy a probably $50 billion sport fishing industry based on the false hope that trash fish can replace it.
And the idiots who trash talk the scientists need to recognize that its not scientists who have raised the alarm, its the people who rely on the lakes for their livelyhood in the form of charter fishing boats and other sport fishing related industries.
Seven million tons of cargo moves annually through the O'Brien Lock and Dam. It must be really cheap cargo to only amount to a million dollars per year.
The common carp is invasive also. It was brought here by German immigrants to Minnesota as a sport fish.
I'm sure someone has receipes. Another option, encourage bowhunting of carp, and their use as fertilizer.
We have a recipe for Susquehanna River Carp here in the Twilight Zone....Get a cedar board, filet the carp and rub with seasoning....prepare an indirect charcoal fire, roast until flaky and done, then throw away the carp and eat the board.
Next they’ll be saying that stink bugs are good for the inside of your home and that the snake fish is helping to keep our waterways clean.
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