Catfish farming on the Mekong River Delta

The Mekong River is the 12th longest river in the world at 4200km (2600 miles), and is the largest river in Southeast Asia. It is on the Mekong River that Vietnamese fish farmers farm Tra, Basa and Panga catfish. In the early 1990s the United States and Vietnam were in what was termed the 'Catfish wars', this was basically where the US put restrictions on the importation of the Vietnamese product known as Tra, Basa and Panga catfish.

The embargo was the response of the US catfish farmers who lobbied their government, who in turn placed restrictions. Also the US Congress was lobbied and eventually passed a resolution that the Vietnamese catfish could no longer be called catfish - a ruling in response to the pressure brought by the US catfish farmers' association.

In the past 35 years, Vietnam has seen its population grow from 35 million people to an estimated 85 million people today; this has had a serious effect on the Mekong River and its Delta, where once it was situated in a quiet rural setting, today its more of an industrial environment.

However, the river is the lifeblood of the region.
Many of the inhabitant's houses are built on stilts with the river flowing below and it is used for everything from bathing to cloth washing. Waste from industrial and human activity along its banks finds its way into the river.

The industries located on the river's banks range from wood mills, to salt and ice production facilities, to cement manufacturing and chemical plants. While all this is going on fisherman still cast their nets into the Mekong and harvest small fish used for fish feed production and catfish are still kept in pens in these very waters.

The Vietnamese government's health and aquaculture officials have been warning fish farmers that their farming practise and the water quality is no longer coming up to standards expected internationally.

In 2009, for example, Vietnam exported US$4.5 billion of seafood, including catfish, to the US, Southeast Asia, Asia and Europe. The Mekong River supplies an estimated 14 times more fish products to US supermarkets than it did just six years ago.

Worryingly, less than two percent of all seafood imported into the US from Vietnam is inspected by the United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA). Of this, a proportion has been found to contain potential carcinogens, veterinary drugs and salmonella; the result of farming practises in what has become one of the world's dirtiest rivers.