At a sturgeon farm on a pristine lake near southern Dalat town, a worker hoists a large white fish out off the water. “It’s an albino,” says Vietnam’s eccentric “Caviar King” Le Anh Duc adding triumphantly, “Gold eggs!”
Not only are the eggs from the rare sturgeon — Duc has just 40 albinos out of half a million fish — an off-white ‘gold’ color but they are also a money-spinner.
Albino caviar can sell for up to US$100,000 per kilo, compared to black Beluga caviar, a snip at just US$5,000 to US$10,000 a kilo according to industry figures.
Photo: AFP
Duc, a jovial Russian-educated businessman with a love of risky ventures, is a man with a mission: to get Made In Vietnam caviar onto dinner tables across the world at a reasonable price — starting with the country best known for its penchant for the salted fish-eggs.
“If we can sell our caviar to Russia — where really, they know about caviar — then people will understand this is a top quality product,” said the 36-year-old entrepreneur, who already has a slew of other projects, from real estate to sea planes, under his belt.
His company, Caviar de Duc, has already signed an agreement with a Russian importer to sell between two and four tons of caviar to Russia in 2015 — although some Vietnamese seafood producers are already warning the collapse of the Russian ruble could hit exports.
Photo: AFP
Long beloved of the rich and famous, caviar is an expensive, high-end delicacy, but one now in crisis — wild caviar production has fallen from a high of some 3,000 tons per year in the 1970s to almost zero.
Rampant over-fishing and pollution in caviar’s birthplace, the Caspian Sea, mean the wild beluga sturgeon is now critically endangered.
In 1998, traditional caviar production from natural fisheries was strictly limited by a system of quotas imposed by the United Nations Convention on Endangered Species (CITES), prompting greater interest and investment in sturgeon farming.
Italy, which has been farming sturgeon for decades, is now the world’s top farmed caviar producer, and a new generation of newcomers like Vietnam are eyeing a slice of the market.
Duc currently has some 500,000 sturgeon spread across six farms in Vietnam, all in hydroelectric dam reservoirs leased from the communist government.
This year his fish produced some five tons of caviar. Duc wants to more than treble his output by 2017 and is ultimately dreaming of producing 100 tons of high-quality caviar a year.
“Now, caviar is like a hyper-luxury product... but it’s also a healthy, delicious product. More people should eat caviar,” he told AFP.
NATURAL ADVANTAGE
Most of the 250-400 tons of caviar on the global market each year now comes from farmed sturgeon, according to World Sturgeon Conservation Society (WSCS) estimates.
In Russia, previously one of the most biggest suppliers, “the natural population (of sturgeon) has practically disappeared,” said Paolo Bronzi, vice president of the WSCS.
Despite traditional supplies drying up, demand for caviar is increasing — spurred by the flood of newly-wealthy consumers in Asia and the Middle East — and there is growing pressure to find a new, sustainable way to feed the industry.
Sturgeon, like salmon, are relatively easy to farm — and the WSCS estimates supply could increase to 500-750 tons a year within the next few years.
Vietnam is well placed to fill the demand.
It already boasts a big aquaculture, with large export-orientated prawn and catfish industries — although these have been sometimes hit by food safety concerns.
Duc is fanatic about quality: he does not use hormones or antibiotics on his fish, and keeps them in large cages with fewer fish to reduce stress levels, as he bids to build a reputation for Vietnamese roe.
He also opposes the use of borex — a standard but toxic preservative used in most caviar — using only salt. His tins of caviar last just two months, but he is looking into Japanese high-tech freezing technology.
He has turned down offers to supply caviar wholesale to the big-name brands that dominate the existing industry, aiming instead to build a reputation for Vietnamese caviar. Some new producers, in particular China, suffer from perceived food-safety issues, said WSCS’s Bronzi, but there is no reason that Vietnamese caviar can’t storm into the market.
“I don’t think that caviar coming from new countries will be always confined because of its origin... It depends on the new customers, the dealers and obviously on the prices,” he said.
‘THEY TOLD ME I WAS CRAZY’
Duc’s sturgeon farming experiment began in 2007 with 50,000 fingerlings after he defied expert advice and decided that sturgeon could live in Vietnam’s warmer waters.
But his first caviar harvest was in 2013, as sturgeon take years to mature.
“The scientists they told me I was crazy,” he said, adding that the Russian experts he had hired all flew home in disgust when he insisted the fish would thrive in Vietnam’s reservoirs, some 10 degrees Celsius warmer than the sturgeon’s favored habitat.
Now, he has more customers than he can handle in Vietnam — as the communist country’s burgeoning elite develop a taste for global delicacies.
In Vietnam, Duc already supplies many of the country’s five star hotels and regularly provides caviar for high-end parties — from soiries hosted by the French Ambassador in Hanoi to a birthday party for the daughter of Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung.
“The quality is very good,” said Sakal Phoeung, executive chef at the Sofitel Saigon Plaza, which uses Caviar de Duc.
“Of course the eggs are smaller than caviar we can find in Russia or Iran but in terms of quality, taste, it is really close to that,” Sakal said.
April 28 to May 4 During the Japanese colonial era, a city’s “first” high school typically served Japanese students, while Taiwanese attended the “second” high school. Only in Taichung was this reversed. That’s because when Taichung First High School opened its doors on May 1, 1915 to serve Taiwanese students who were previously barred from secondary education, it was the only high school in town. Former principal Hideo Azukisawa threatened to quit when the government in 1922 attempted to transfer the “first” designation to a new local high school for Japanese students, leading to this unusual situation. Prior to the Taichung First
When the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese forces 50 years ago this week, it prompted a mass exodus of some 2 million people — hundreds of thousands fleeing perilously on small boats across open water to escape the communist regime. Many ultimately settled in Southern California’s Orange County in an area now known as “Little Saigon,” not far from Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, where the first refugees were airlifted upon reaching the US. The diaspora now also has significant populations in Virginia, Texas and Washington state, as well as in countries including France and Australia.
On April 17, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) launched a bold campaign to revive and revitalize the KMT base by calling for an impromptu rally at the Taipei prosecutor’s offices to protest recent arrests of KMT recall campaigners over allegations of forgery and fraud involving signatures of dead voters. The protest had no time to apply for permits and was illegal, but that played into the sense of opposition grievance at alleged weaponization of the judiciary by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to “annihilate” the opposition parties. Blamed for faltering recall campaigns and faced with a KMT chair
Article 2 of the Additional Articles of the Constitution of the Republic of China (中華民國憲法增修條文) stipulates that upon a vote of no confidence in the premier, the president can dissolve the legislature within 10 days. If the legislature is dissolved, a new legislative election must be held within 60 days, and the legislators’ terms will then be reckoned from that election. Two weeks ago Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) proposed that the legislature hold a vote of no confidence in the premier and dare the president to dissolve the legislature. The legislature is currently controlled