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AMERICA and Vietnam are at war again. This time, however, the old foes are engaged in a multibillion-dollar battle over a hideous, bewhiskered creature of the Deep South: the Mississippi catfish.

Despite its bulbous eyes and doleful look, the catfish of the impoverished Mississippi Delta has just triggered the first major trade dispute between Washington and Hanoi since the two countries normalised relations in 1995.

In Mississippi, where cotton used to be king, the catfish — once considered so foul-tasting that only plantation slaves would eat it — has in recent decades become its most profitable cash crop.

It has spawned a $600 million (£379 million) a year industry that has transformed Mississippi fortunes, made catfish the second most popular seafood in the US diet and turned the South’s catfish farmers into one of the country’s most powerful lobby groups.

Suddenly they are being forced out of business by competition from Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, from where much cheaper imports of basa and tra — catfish in all but name — have surged 800 per cent in the past two years.

Down on the Mississippi, where folk don’t take too kindly to the Vietnamese, they’re getting real mad. Next week the Catfish Institute of America, after filing an anti-dumping petition against Vietnam at the US Trade Commission, expects to hear whether the White House will accede to its demand for a 190 per cent import duty on the Vietnamese invaders.

Many Southern politicians have taken up the cause, including one Arkansas congressman, Marion Berry, who claims that there are traces of Agent Orange in the Vietnamese fish.

Like many others on Capitol Hill, he is demanding that President Bush give the same subsidies and protection from foreign imports that he recently afforded to livestock farmers and steel workers.

Congress has already opened hostilities with the Vietnamese by ruling that only catfish raised on US farms can be sold under that label.

But that cuts little ice in Belzoni, the self-styled “Catfish Capital of the World”. Deep in the delta heartland, this little town sits surrounded by millions of acres of neatly cut catfish ponds that are as much a part of delta life nowadays as blues and cypress swamps.

The townsfolk want to see the Vietnamese critters sent packing. “People are going to restaurants and eatin’ this Vietnamese sewer food,” said Tom Turner, the Mayor of Belzoni, in the lobby of the town’s Catfish Museum. “Cos that’s what it is. It’s grown in the Mekong Delta. I’ve seen things they feed those fish you just wouldn’t believe.

“We can’t compete with these Mekong guys. They ain’t got no minimum wage. They use chemicals we can’t use. Our fish is clean and pure, fed on wholegrain feed. These tariffs are a good idea. It’s nothing to do with anti-free trade. It just puts things on a level playing field. We just need to be treated fair.”

Eddie Harris, the Humphreys County agriculture agent, stared out at the grinning, 40ft-long sculptured catfish on the museum’s front lawn, and said: “Catfish have carried this county for the last 15 years.”

A generation ago, Mississippi Delta farmers turned away from cotton and pinned their hopes on the flat-headed, scaleless bottom-feeder once called the river rat. They trained fingerlings (catfish minnows) to eat from the surface, thus ridding the fish of its muddy taste. Indeed they worked to remove all flavour so Americans could add their own with a multitude of sauces.

They worked tirelessly to change its image, spending millions of dollars on advertising slogans including: “Verdi’s Operas, Shakespeare’s Comedies, Trudy’s Baked Catfish”.

In 1970, 5.7 million lb of catfish was processed; last year more than 600 million lb. As Mr Turner said: “It became a blessing to our economy”. But a Vietnamese fillet now costs $1.60 a pound, compared with $2.40 for a US catfish and demand has plummeted.

“But the Vietnam fish ain’t pure,” complained Leon Johnson as he spat a wad of tobacco on the edge of a ten-acre catfish pond. “A lot of smaller farmers are having trouble staying afloat.”

Mr Johnson, 28, who farms 1,200 acres of water on the Silver Creek Plantation, three miles from Belzoni, has just mechanically spewed from a lorry the floating feed that has stopped the catfish trawling the mud for its food.

The water boils as 65,000 fish frenziedly eat their daily meal. He is an avid reader of The Catfish Journal, the publication of the Catfish Farmers of America, which represents 13,000 employees. “We’re all waiting to see what happens in Washington,” he said. “They gotta help us in Vietnam.”

One for the oven

Hundreds of catfish recipes are tested at Belzoni’s annual World Catfish Festival, the next in April next year. Although most Southerners prefer deep-fried catfish, chefs have devised numerous ways to cook it.


One of these includes:

CATFISH PARMESAN

2/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon paprika
1 egg, beaten
1/4 cup milk
5 to 6 small catfish fillets (about 2lb)
1/4 cup margarine melted
1/3 cup sliced almonds

Combine first five ingredients. Stir well. Combine egg and milk. Stir well. Dip fillets in egg mixture; dredge in flour mixture. Arrange in a lightly greased baking dish and drizzle with butter. Sprinkle almonds over the top. Bake at 350 deg for 35 to 50 mins or until fish flakes easily when tasted with a fork. “This is one of the favourites,” the Catfish Institute’s recipe book states.