Of Catfish Wars and Shooting Wars

farmed fish are what they eat, and they're not fed good stuff in the US. Probably fed nastier stuff overseas. Shudder...

The Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch recommends US farmed catfish as a "best choice" and Basa or Swai farmed as "good alternative". So feel free to eat either as safe and not harmful to the environment.

What a beautifully written essay about the "catfish wars" between America and Vietnam. Of course, what is going on is American protectionism. The questions are whether it is necessary now, or whether it is a good thing, overall. The case Mr. Cohen is making here is that the protectionism is not necessary, and that we should feel sorry for these skilled, but lowly paid Vietnamese workers, as well as still be repenting for what we did to their country during a war we lost to them.

But, should we? I'd say no. They aren't low-paid Vietnam standards of living, and they get breaks during their 12-hour shifts. Six days a week of these shifts is a lot, but ask any of them if they would rather stop doing this work, and to a person, they will tell you no. Many Americans work that much during any given week.

Are the Vietnamese dumping catfish on our markets? Probably. Do our workers need protection? Well, if you want jobs to stay in America, the answer is yes. Do you mind paying a bit more for your catfish? If you do mind, don't support protectionism. There are no magical solutions here. It's all about business and its regulation, or lack of it.

Roger, a small aside:
"rice paddies" is a misnomer.
"padi" refers to harvested rice.
rice fields are unharvested rice thus "rice fields" is the correct usage.

When, if ever, will America and Americans escape the consequences of following in the wake of the historical racial ethnic sectarian misadventure actions and inactions of the British and French Empires?

Vietnam has taken the road of commerce and peace, true to the spirit of Adam Smith; however, I wouldn't want to consume imported frozen fillet. And like the gentleman preferring Southern catfish, farm raised in the Mississippi Delta, I'd go for local and farm-raised, even if I have to pay more. Same applies to frozen shrimp imported from Thailand and Vietnam.

I don't save many NYT articles, but this one was a keeper. Just read Seymour Hersh's article in the most recent New Yorker, and his account of revisiting My Lai 40-some years later is riveting. I have a huge amount of respect for the Vietnamese people and their resilience, especially in contrast to what has been done to them by the US and other western powers. We really owe it to them to afford them some protection from the Chinese, at least economically. It's the least we can do.

Viet Nam will stand out in human annals as the in carnation of people's power willingly and capablly of confronting , under a wise and publicly respondent leadership, the worst outgrowth of modern life.Namely The USA. imperialistc single mindedness about dominating the world and the hellish tools of war that technological progresslaid at its hand.
It will also stand for the limited ness of brute force of American imperialism when it severely touches the every day life of the ordinary American citizen who is then bound to restrain it.

It is gratifying to read your latest column on Vietnam. We have good friends there and visit yearly and have known for some time how the Vietnamese view the American War (what it's called there). Sadly, back in America there are many who never understood the folly of the Vietnam War. We could have been allies a lot longer ago and by enhancing that relationship instead of waging war, we would have saved lives and benefited both sides. I admire the Vietnamese for their attitude and desire to move forward and not look back. They should be a natural ally against the aggressive and dangerous China.

Elegant solutions to the problems brought about by overpopulation demand agreements such as NAFTA and TPP but do little to halt continued destruction of the natural element of which we are the supposed observant part.

Called simply "Panga" in France. Always available.

All of this points out the extreme rationality irrationality of the Vietnam War. To this day I don't understand why it is we fought it. It's amazing how friendly the Vietnamese still nominally Communist or with the Americans today. I wonder how Americans would feel about the Vietnamese if we they killed tens of millions of Americans. I suspect not so good

Mr. Cohen,
You should see the documentary film - "Darwin's Nightmare" about the Nile Perch business in Tanzania around lake Victoria.
Your readers should also see it if they haven't.

Mr. Cohen,
One of our favorite persons at headquarters in New York in a children's international agency was a Belgium journalist, Jacques Danois was his name. He had covered the war in Vietnam and went on to write 'The Sparrows of Saigon'.

At 12 in France, I grew up with my friend from Laos where we were both boarders at school. We were to take our finals together at 17 and I remember her last call from Paris 'don't take the oral exam with the philosophy teacher!'. Curiosity made me go in search of him, because the little despot had failed so many of us at the written tests that angry parents were calling for an explanation.

A long line of shaky students, an angry testy little man wearing shades, and I had 5 minutes to read a page on Karl Marx - don't ask me why, but I decided instead to give my interrogator my views on Vietnam where the war was raging. I didn't have any, and my friend from Laos and I, really had no idea of what was going on at the time.

The story? In praise of modern progress, I found on internet that she is alive and well, the owner today of a fine hotel in Vientiane and when I call after all these years, well I am going to ask among other questions, for her bill of fare when I visit. Nothing fishy. Some things never change when it comes to taste.

I often ask folks what the phrase "There's more than one way to skin a cat" means? What is this "cat"? Most look horrified and reply: "Why, it's really terrible! Taking the skin off a cute, furry animal and a beloved pet...now, why would anyone want to do that?"

Truth be told, it's not your pussy cat that the phrase refers to. As southern residents who are used to eating catfish will tell you, the critter has a skin that's like leather, and removing it is a huge chore. So the phrase "There's more than one way to skin a cat" refers to the fact that there are various ways to remove catfish skin...all necessary before you can have it for dinner.

Now, try that on someone...I'll bet there's not one person in ten thousand who will ever guess the real meaning of "cat"!

Here in Southern Louisiana, we are all about food......well....not as much as Dr. Lector but his mother did give him the good advice to try new things......................I have tried "catfish" from Vietnam....several times.......prepared in a variety of styles. Nothing could make the "catfish" palatable. i cannot recommend that you try it.

There is no dispute whatsoever that taxonomically, Vietnamese catfish are fully catfish, not "catfish-like". The Vietnamese catfish in question belong to the family Pangasiidae, in the order Siluriformes (catfish). There are more than 3,000 species of catfish recognized by science, distributed on every continent except Antartica.

I've ate it... and was really not too impressed... and I'm sure the environmental controls there are slim to none... as well. ;)

So, I guess we shouldn't have gone to war against these people, right?
Wow, was that ever a mistake!
Whose idea was that, anyway?
Do you think if we'd been more honest with ourselves about Vietnam we wouldn't have invaded Iraq?
What about bombing Iran? Any lessons there?

An interesting article by Roger Cohen. I thought Americans were for free trade and certainly Vietnam is an important strategic partner in its faltering Asia first strategy. Why bugger up a potential strong relationship with an important SE Asian country over catfish?

A beautiful read that provided a great sense of place! Thanks.

I'm a little bothered by the graves among the rice fields. Nothing wrong with graves, of course, but I like to keep them away from my food.

Great column, one of your best. More, please.

"Pangusus" not "pangasius" in Europe.

I only look for farm raised Southern catfish. Mississippi Delta is preferred.

"The wars over, the Vietnamese did not want to dwell on them. They wanted to sow seeds of commerce rather than grievance. Asia could offer this lesson to other parts of the world where I have spent too much time. Vengeance and victimhood wither the soul. The life-giving rice growing around the dead is an image fecund with acceptance. Even the mud yields."
Nicely written.
Cultures that are informed, if not formed, by Hinduism and Buddhism seem to have discarded the idea of death as punishment, or failure, or somehow unnatural.
Monotheistic cultures have placed the dread of death at the center of their lives, which seems to perpetuate the ideas of vengeance and retribution as natural. The fear of dying and going to hell informs so much of our fear and bitterness towards each other.
Imagine that if one didn't have to worry about an eternity in hell because of one little sin, one could then stop trying to save the rest of us from going to hell for our little sins.
The Dalai Lama is held in universal esteem and notice that he never exhorts or chastises, he only coaxes. And loves.

Dear Mr. Cohen, Your artful article about catfish and the Vietnam Era brought back nostalgic memories of the ‘60s of a similar nature, but situated in Texas rather than the Mekong. On my way to basic training at Lackland AFB, I stopped at a roadside stand with a sign saying “Fried Cat and Cold Beer” (who could resist that at age 21?). On the beach beside the shallow and sandy Crystal Shoals Lake (now irritatingly renamed “LBJ Lake”) near Austin I found some wooden tables and benches surrounding an eight-foot-long wood-burning BBQ grill covered with local catfish nipped from the lake as I watched. The Lone Star bottled beer was cold, the spicy catfish delightful , and the locals friendly. Yankees and other strangers were generally not allowed, but I was given a dispensation because I wasn’t a draft dodger and didn’t demand a glass for my beer. That memory kept me connected with the real world for the next three months. Of course, these days such places have been put out of existence in the USA by state and federal bureaucrats. Yet another American icon lost to globalization and regulation along with Mom & Pop hamburger joints, TVs the size of refrigerators but Made in America, and seven-year-old crosswalk safety monitors.

'The wars over, the Vietnamese did not want to dwell on them.'

So true, almost unbelievably true!

We spent a week in Vietnam last December, visiting HCM City, Hue, Hanoi and Halong Bay. All so beautiful, so serene.

In all those seven days, in all those cities, we never ever got a hint that this country was at war with the US, or rather, that the US was practically bent on bombing it back to the stone age! Not a graffiti, not a slogan, anything at all that will give you a hint that they fought a long and vicious war with the US in which almost 3 million of their people, as well as 50k+ young Americans lost their lives! They did not give any indication that they harbor any hatred toward the Americans. Neither toward the French, who colonized them for over 100 years.

I kept thinking, 'this can't be real, this must be a hallucination'.

But it is true. The Vietnamese appear to have simply chosen to forgive (probably not forget - they do have the well-kept war museums, the Chu Chi Tunnels, etc.) and move on.

Um - just to chime in: The minimum wage in Vietnam is $114-$146 USD – the variance reflects cost of living differences dependent upon location. The average income in Vietnam is currently $148/mo. in Ho Chi Minh City, $145/mo. in Hanoi – reflecting that the majority of Vietnamese earn minimum wage. Thus a $220/mo. income is considerably greater than the average Vietnamese worker earns.
Some commentors have questioned the quality of the fish – in 2001 a group of U.S. catfish farmers and processors traveled to Vietnam on a fact-finding mission. “We thought we’d find them growing fish in polluted water and processing them in crude plants,” says one processor who went on the trip. “But that’s not what we found. We came back scared to death.” The Vietnamese operations were vastly better than what we had expected.

Mr, Cohen makes two points in this essay: one about war and the other about fish. I shall stick to the war part.
The Vietnamese have gone past the the killing fields and moved on. There is a wistful sentiment here that the others should do so also. Let the West, led by the US find wars to conduct and let those who were warred upon, move on.
But the real question is, how does one stop the perennial warmongers? How does one deal with the clamor of ordinance factories, who can thrive, only on wars? Where is the critical point in bomb-making where wars have to become the inevitable outlet?

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) now being negotiated by President Obama with Viet Nam and 10 other nations will pit American workers against Nguyen Van Tu and millions of other Vietnamese workers who make an astounding $220 per month, which is about one-third less than Chinese workers now make.

Helping transnational corporations find vast pools of penny wage labor has been the goal of U.S. trade policy since NAFTA. Now that Chinese wages are rising, countries in Asia such as Vietnam and Thailand are being enlisted for the outsourcing of more U.S. jobs -- and the catfish workers in Louisiana are not the only American workers whose jobs are at risk. Why our President's do this remains baffling.

A nice story showing how much nicer things are in peace than in war. The American Museum of Natural History had an exhibit on Vietnam many years ago and they showed an endless loop film of smiling and happy Vietnamese riding bikes through the streets of one of their cities and it was such a contrast to the Hollywood Rambo image of Vietnamese as sinister. Thanks for the lift I needed it after reading the Bolton manifesto earlier today.

In 2000, 25 years the war's end, my wife and I went there on vacation. I had been drafted in 1968 and served 14 months in an infantry unit, some months it in the delta of the Song Vam Co Dong, a river south of Saigon.

When we flew into Saigon the landscape below me seemed curious. Most of it no longer resembled the maps in my mind. Features such as rivers were as I remembered. But what amounted to subdivisions spread crowded the city and condominium highrises rose along old French streets.

Toward the end of our 2 weeks we visited some of the areas in the delta, and north of Saigon near Xuan Loc, where my unit had operated, where men died or were wounded, where long nights waiting, and watching, were troublingly spent, long days, patrollling, where hamlets we'd swept through were painted into the texture of the rice paddies, sugar cane and pineapple paddies.

Too much had changed. I recognized little. I couldn't, despite best effort, find where we'd lost 5 men one night, or even approach areas where died or were wounded. The hooches and water buffalo of that past were long gone. Half of the Vietnamese we encountered were born after the war ended.

My wife and I stopped at a favorite Vietnamese restaurant on our way home last night. A family owned business, it owes it's existence to the chaotic end to that war, and the flight of Vietnamese to the U.S.and Seattle.

Dickens said it best about troubled times: "...it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness..."
.

As a Mississippi expat, I buy only domestic catfish, and I prefer to look for Mississippi catfish. None better. And I feel good keeping the folks at those catfish farms in the Delta employed.

I know I'll get some comments to the effect," Why don't you go to Vietnam". I have never been there, the Vietnam War was way before I was born. However, what you describe seems like almost utopia. People and Nature living in harmony. No aspirations to bigger houses, bigger cars, bigger anything and the contentment of the Vietnamese. (Maybe, I am wrong there.) Reminds me of my lazy childhood summers at my Granny's house in Kerala, India - also with emerald paddy fields for miles on end. And the world would be a better place if we took a page from the Vietnamese book - complete forgiveness for their enemies who almost vanquished them. Forgiveness, acceptance without forgetting their dead - a lot we should emulate.

If Asian catfish is so obviously inferior, why all this protectionist furor ? Disclosure of origin will be enough.

Despite the horrific number of casualties on both sides, the US and Vietnam have managed to move on to an amicable relationship. Alas, if only the Palestinians and Israelis could do the same.

"The U.S. catfish industry initially pressed Congress to prohibit labeling “basa” as catfish. The first antidumping duties against “certain frozen fish fillets from Vietnam” went into effect in 2003. They have not been lifted. More recently, Vietnam has been angered by an attempt to reclassify “basa” as catfish, which could lead to stricter United States Department of Agriculture inspection standards."

Enough said. The US catfish industry cannot compete and resort to protectionist measures. The victims are the American consumers in terms of higher prices and less choices because there are other markets for Vietnamese catfish.

Have you ever taken a stroll in the supermarkets fish section? I have, in the last four or five years I have noticed a drastic decline in the variety of fish we eat. There is a preponderance of bottom dwellers with the various name mentioned in your article. It is mostly catfish. it doesn't look healthy and it has become very pricey. I can't get myself to look at it, let alone consume it. All the farm raised fish and shrimps look pathetic. I sometimes notice lesions on most farm raised fish. I don't buy it and I don't eat it. With a growing population and the simultaneous depletion of many species of fish in sick oceans, I can only anticipate food wars and exorbitant prices. It is insane to harvest fish in one part of the world send it somewhere else thousands of miles to be cleaned and packaged then shipped again around the globe. It is incredibly inefficient, as it sends the burden of damages all over the world. All this to save the few pennies so that a few companies make a killing and everybody else pays the price for it. It is penny wise and pound foolish. To put it bluntly it is dumb!

Add this to the list of shrimp, rice and other food-products sourced from water containing heavy metals, sewage, etc. that are produced in this section of the world and shipped to our shelves. Enjoy - but, no thank you - I think I'll pass.

Importing shouldn't be a way to avoid our countries stricter regulations.

“Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”

Confucius

Fisheries in the UK put fish into refrigerated containers, send them to Asia to be cleaned by cheap labor, then bring back the fillets via refrigerated containers to be sold in Europe. Shipping is so cheap now that is cheaper than just cleaning the fish where they are caught.

It is labor arbitrage.

It is poor drafting of trade agreements. We ought not to be setting up terms of trade so that we are living from labor paid $220/mo for 72 hour work weeks in conditions we'd never allow in our own country. It is a false economy.

One cheap fish meal may seem nice, but the pattern of living off exploitation ruins our own economy too. We undermine our own lives, our own futures, our children's futures, when we set it up to run this way.

The fish farms in VN use chemically based antibiotics in the feed to control disease at enormous concentration levels - The TPP will have solutions to get around the export to the USA - thanks to Obama - enjoy Mr. Cohen!

Sorry Roger, but the fish raised in Vietnam, imported under different monikers such as basa and swai as are not nearly as tasty as our US raised catfish. I have recently spent time touring in the Mekong Delta as well as preparing the imported fillets at home. Not even close in texture and flavor to a real catfish and when served at a restaurant as "catfish", I can immediately spot an import and return it to the kitchen.

So true. And to think that our country wasted the lives of 60,000 dead and countless disabled Americans fighting for the corrupt dictatorship of South Vietnam -- only to become entangled in endless multi-trillion dollar battles in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen . . . Will it ever end?

Mr. Cohen,
I sure hope you enjoy your 'swai' dinner. You may not know or perhaps choose to igneor the following:
1. this fish of many names is, like all catfish family members a bottom feeder - it eats the garbage the sinks to the bottom of waterways.
2. The rivers and Meknog delta of vietnam are very very polluted.

Having grown up in America's delta I can tell you that swai have had a large impact on American job's and income. Not only is the labor cheaper but the standards of inspection and quality are not the same. Make the source farms and fish meet the same standards we impose on our American producers and perhaps they might compete. As it is today we get inferior product raised in much less sanitary conditions destroying American jobs. Protectionism may have lost favor but it has a place and losing it has led to an economy where we aren't even willing to pay a living wage or protect our own citizens.