Nobody can tell if there’ll be room for home based businesses in this scheme, but you might as well know about it if fishing all day would be your dream job!
From the Memphis Business Journal
Three species of carp with voracious appetites for algae were imported to the U.S. to help clean catfish ponds in Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama, but after major flooding in 1993 they were flushed into tributaries of the Mississippi River. Another species, the black carp, was imported because it eats snails, which harbor flukes that kill catfish. In 1994 it was found in the Osage River in Missouri.
Today the carp have taken over much of the Mississippi River, displacing native fish by devouring the algae and insect larvae that most fish depend on. The infestation is worse in the Mid-South, but people in Illinois are taking the first steps to control the carp. In parts of the upper river system, exotic carp account for 75% of fish populations, and sport fishermen complain about 60-pound carp that won’t take a hook, but as is their habit will leap out of the water with body slams.
Amidst all this anxiety, an Illinois legislator sees the carp as a business opportunity everyone has missed.
“I’m taking the approach that if we can’t do anything else with the fish, then let’s eat them,” says state Sen. Mike Jacobs, D-Moline.
He’s asking the Illinois Legislature for $750,000 to jump-start a commercial processing plant that can turn the pestilent carp into fish sticks. The first likely markets would be institutional users like public schools, prisons and food relief programs in the U.S. and overseas.
What can’t be used for food can be converted into cattle feed or garden fertilizer. ADM/Alliance Nutrition in Quincy, Ill., already processes fish waste into high-protein cattle feed.
Jacobs has an evolving plan, but so far has gotten mostly snickers from his peers in the state capitol at the very idea of eating a carp.
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