A round of applause, please, for members of the House of Representatives who support an effort to target new consumers of the invasive blue catfish of the Chesapeake Bay — cats and dogs. You may have noticed a news story about this last week: Passage of a bipartisan bill — the Mitigation Action Watermen Support Act, sponsored by members of Congress from Maryland and Virginia — presents a new front in the battle against the blues.  Blue catfish eat everything and anything in the bay — some 80 types of fish, according to a Salisbury University study — and some of them grow quite large. So incentivising the commercial catch and turning the harvest into pet and animal food makes sense. But a change in federal law would expand the market for human consumption of Chesapeake blue catfish, and that would make even more sense. I did some reporting on this a few years ago and learned how lobbying by one branch of the catfish industry — the southern branch — can keep another from growing. It’s an object lesson in special-interest politics. First, understand that the Chesapeake has an overabundance of invasive blue catfish. In some of the tributaries of the bay, biologists believe the blues constitute up to 75% of the total fish biomass. They have big appetites and feed on menhaden, striped bass, shad and blue crabs, all struggling native species. This could potentially create an ecological imbalance in the bay. “A robust commercial fishery for blue catfish may help reduce their predatory pressure on other commercial fishery species,” the Chesapeake Bay Foundation declared in 2022. Fishing for blue catfish in a Chesapeake tributary (Maryland DNR photo) Blue catfish — especially filets from the smaller ones, in the range of 15 to 24 inches long — taste good, and it’s considered safe to eat. I’ve cooked it at home and enjoyed it. You can find filets for sale in some local supermarkets. (Wegman’s switched exclusively to wild blue catfish several years ago.) More restaurants in the region have been putting it on their menus.  But Chesapeake watermen and seafood wholesalers are missing out on a potentially huge national market because of a federal regulation that gives a competitive advantage to the catfish farming industry in the Mississippi Delta. When Congress passed a farming bill in 2008, it came with an amendment that required the U.S. Department of Agriculture to inspect the processing of blue catfish. That was a unique requirement — no other fish is subjected to USDA inspections — and Republican politicians from leading catfish-farming states (Mississippi and Alabama) were responsible for it. Originally adopted to stave off competition from Asian producers, the USDA requirement gave an advantage to the industry in the Delta, where raising catfish in farm ponds is big business. Processors and USDA inspectors there handle large and frequent harvests, and catfish are the only fish they process and inspect. In Maryland, processors operate 24/7 to keep all kinds of seafood moving to market. The catfish regulation presents an obstacle because a USDA inspector needs to be present when handlers trim and filet blue catfish. There’s time each day for that to happen, but not enough.  A longer processing time would open up a larger market. But that would require a change in the federal law that protects companies in the Delta. The law is a competition killer. The Government Accountability Office found it costly and unnecessary. So it’s smart for Congress to throw some grants to pet and animal food manufacturers to purchase blue catfish from watermen or seafood processors. It can only help. But Maryland and Virginia are missing out on a much bigger national market for good-eatin’ catfish caught in the wild, not harvested from farms.  Dan Rodricks’ column appears weekly in the Fishbowl. He can be reached via danrodricks.com ...read more read less