Word: beluga
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Better get your last licks in soon, however. The beluga sturgeon that produce the world's best caviar are under enormous pressure from overfishing, dam building and pollution by the former Soviet republics that ring the Caspian Sea. Most species of sturgeon are in decline--some as much as 90%--and those native to the Caspian appear to be doomed. Environmental groups have petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to put beluga on the endangered-species list--a move that would cut off supply to the U.S., the world's largest consumer (Americans swallow up to 80% of the annual...
...People are going to have to live without beluga caviar for a while if we are going to have any hope of rescuing the species," says Lisa Speer, senior policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council and a spokeswoman for a sturgeon-hugging coalition that calls itself Caviar Emptor...
Anatoli Vlasenko, deputy director of the Caspian Research Institute of Fisheries, disputes reports of the beluga's demise. "The 90% depletion figure is a gross exaggeration on the part of the nervous media," he says. Still, the Russians have worked hard to sustain the remaining population with hatcheries and export quotas. Banning imports "would be the catalyst for a new round of poaching and illegal trade," says Armen Petrossian, head of the International Caviar Importers Association. Tariffs collected from the legal trade pay for the hatcheries that produce 97% of beluga swimming in the Caspian. Without revenues from the legal...
...demand for beluga caviar has led not just to illegal imports of what some call black gold but also to a rash of false labeling. Arkady Panchernikov, whose Caspian Star Caviar handled some 60% of the caviar imported into the U.S., pleaded guilty last month to six counts of fraud and trafficking without permits for falsely labeling inferior grades of caviar as beluga. "Most of the caviar in the country has been brought in illegally," says Edward Grace, the Wildlife Service special agent who investigated the case...
...Caspian caviar gets harder to come by, all sorts of alternatives are popping up. Scientists can't get their hands on enough beluga sturgeon to start breeding them in the U.S. (there are fewer than five in the 50 states), but America does have its own natural population of sturgeon and sturgeon-like fish. Roe from native white sturgeon and its close cousin, the paddlefish, is becoming increasingly popular. Stolt Sea Farm, near Sacramento, Calif., has boosted production of its Sterling-brand caviar from farmed white sturgeon from 50 lbs. in 1995 to more than 12,000 lbs. a year...