Wuguo, a common freshwater fish, is coming back with a new name, the Taiwan tilapia, and making a splash in the export market.
The name "tilapia," which describes a genus of fish originating in Africa, is largely unknown in Taiwan, but mention wuguo--a meaty river fish that provided a ready source of protein in leaner years and today fattens the purses of exporters--and the situation changes entirely.
Wuguo is named after Wu Jhen-huei and Guo Ci-jhang, who introduced tilapia to the island in 1946. Wu and Guo had been recruited by the Japanese military during World War II. After the war, they managed to bring back from Singapore five male and eight female tilapia fry. Guo found that they adapted to the environment well and grew quickly. He gave some to local farmers, who raised them in fishponds. The frequent flooding on the island soon carried the tilapia into Taiwan's rivers, and the fish became one of the most common on the island. By any name, tilapia, raised in 85 countries, is the world's most important cultured fish species, according to the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization.
In the 1950s and 1960s, research organizations in Taiwan, including the Fishery Research Institute and university fishery departments, started to crossbreed different species of tilapia and came up with meatier fish more resistant to disease than the original wuguo. Currently, eight species are cultured in Taiwan. These hybrids are not yet classified as new species but they are generally referred to as Taiwan tilapia and are a common product on fish markets around the world.
Even before the new hybrids, tilapia was a hearty fish that bred almost anywhere it could swim. "All a farmer had to do was dig a pond, pour fingerlings into it and there would be a few tons of fish in a year or so," says Wong Siou-jheng, who now owns 80 hectares of tilapia ponds in Tainan County. "It meant profit without much sweat."
One of the reasons the tilapia bred so quickly was that they were not picky eaters. At the time, a common form of agriculture was integrated farming, in which a farmer, in addition to growing crops, also raised pigs, chickens and ducks, and had a few fishponds. The animal droppings were tossed directly into fishponds as a feed.
Chiang Fu-sung, executive director of the Taiwan Tilapia Alliance (T2A) and a professor at National Taiwan Ocean University's Institute of Applied Economics, explains that wuguo's high tolerance for less-than-ideal environmental conditions made it perfect for this kind of low-cost culturing. And although the feeding method could leave a faintly muddy taste, the fish became an important protein source for many Taiwanese families.
The ease with which the fish were bred, however, caused a glut in the market. The area covered by fishponds grew from 2,500 hectares in 1970 to over 11,000 in 1985. "As in all industries, there needs to be a balance between supply and demand," Wong says. "When there were more fish than people could digest, which was the case for tilapia, the price dropped."
The domestic market for tilapia declined for another reason as well--Taiwan was developing economically and people were getting wealthier. Wholesaler Jiang Jhao-rong explains that tilapia was easy to sell, but the impression that these fish ate feces was in people's minds, so the fish was considered a low-end product. "It was everybody's fish when people were poor, and became a poor man's fish when people got richer," he says. "Once there were more options in the market, people preferred high-end fish for the dinner table."
Yet as tastes were changing, so too was tilapia. Chiang Fu-sung explains that the culturing techniques evolved over the years, and today automatic feeding machines deliver nutritious, non-waste feed. Farmers also have adopted single-sex fish pools to ensure that the fish do not breed beyond the capacity of their fishpond. As a result, Taiwan's wuguo has lost that questionable taste, which was replaced by the true flavor of tilapia meat. "Taiwan is in fact one of the most developed countries in tilapia culturing technology," Chiang says.
Perhaps the greatest changes in the tilapia business can be seen in the processing technology, which allows Taiwan to ship the fish to markets around the world. Ozone sterilization and quick-freezing allow packagers to preserve the firm texture of the fish.
According to Chiang, Taiwan is the first country to export frozen tilapia fish and tilapia fillet. As the first in this market, Taiwanese producers made handsome profits in Japan and the United States. By the late 1990s, nearly all Taiwan tilapia was being shipped to overseas markets, where the old wuguo was showing up as sashimi, fish fillet and sweet-and-sour fish.
Competition for Taiwan's exporters came quickly, however, from China and Southeast Asian countries. The simplicity of breeding the fish allowed competitors to jump into the game. Countries like China, thanks to its lower labor and land costs, can culture the fish in large quantities and at cheaper prices. Currently, annual tilapia production in Taiwan is about 90,000 metric tons, while it is over a million in China. "The quality of their fish is not as good as ours, but China grabs the market with a lower price," Chiang says. In fact, China has replaced Taiwan as the largest supplier to the US market.
As profits from exports to Japan and America fell, Taiwan's tilapia farmers tried to expand into the European market. Fish prices in the European Union are about 20 percent higher than in Japan or the United States. It seemed like an ideal market for Taiwan tilapia. Two years ago, however, a shipment of tilapia from Taiwan to Europe was rejected because traces of antibiotics were detected in the fish, and the Taiwanese exporter could not explain at which stage the problem was occurring.
The use of antibiotics or other drugs is not uncommon in Taiwan, where some farmers have continued to increase the population density of their fishponds. In some cases, however, farmers who are very cautious about not using drugs can still end up with tainted fish. Wong Siou-jheng's experience left him a little frustrated: "Does it make sense that the fish raised with feed imported from Europe failed the EU drug test? Well, that's exactly what happened."
The European Union's strict regulations have become a barrier for many Taiwanese exporters. Yang Shu-fen, owner of the Sei Koh Shokuhin Co., a tilapia processing factory, is one of the few who still export to Europe. Yang's plant in Chiayi County's Yijhu Industrial Zone has the capacity to process three tons of filleted tilapia a day. Fish is ready to be shipped within an hour, after going through about a dozen processes, including 10 minutes of ozone sterilization and 20 minutes of liquid nitrogen quick-freezing. Moreover, the plant meets all the safety and regulatory standards. Yang says, however, that every step from feeding to processing to transporting may leave the fish tainted with drugs. She says she is careful to do business only with people she trusts.
Despite the difficulties of breaking into high-end markets, that is just where Taiwan's tilapia sellers want to go. In order for the fish to be successfully marketed to high-end customers, however, tilapia producers will need to deliver a steady supply of quality fish. To help the industry determine just what standards to adopt to ensure quality and supply, the T2A, a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization, was established in 2002.
One of the alliance's first priorities is to help the farmers adopt detailed record-keeping practices to track the source of fingerlings, water temperatures in breeding ponds, the nature of the feed, and other essential information. "The purpose is to establish a transparent and traceable culturing record for each fish," Chiang Fu-sung says. "The consumers may not care about all the details, but the record-keeping helps establish a good reputation for an aquatic farm. And if anything goes wrong, the problem can be sorted out quickly."
Although two-thirds of all Taiwan's tilapia is still exported, the T2A is also working on promoting the fish in the domestic market. The biggest difficulty remains its image as a poor man's fish. "It's 10 times more difficult to change an old image than build a new one," Chiang says. "So rather than trying to change how people feel about wuguo, we thought it would be easier to just rename the fish." Chiang notes that the Cichlidae family, to which tilapia belongs, has a high-end-sounding Mandarin name, Cihdiao, so the T2A came up with the name "Taiwan diao," or "Taiwan tilapia." Not every wuguo, however, automatically becomes Taiwan diao. Only tilapia raised on farms and processed in plants certified by the Council of Agriculture (COA) earn the Taiwan tilapia stamp and an ID number that consumers can use to track everything about the fish on the T2A's Web site.
"Domestic marketing was of course the most important consideration for changing the name," Chiang says. "It was in addition a good opportunity to establish an entirely transparent industry, from culturing to delivery, which benefits both consumers and the industry."
The Taiwan tilapia has been gradually making a come back in the domestic market, despite competition from China and Southeast Asia. Fish farmer Wong Siou-jheng complains that the origin of some imports is not clearly labeled and some are repackaged to pass them off as Taiwanese products. "I don't mind competition, but it has to be on fair ground," Wong says. "Label the product correctly, and I'll have no complaint, even if people choose lower quality at a lower price."
After largely staying out of the tilapia industry, the government reexamined agricultural policy after Taiwan's accession to the World Trade Organization in 2002. It realized the role the Taiwan tilapia could play in boosting the island's image. In 2003, the COA listed Taiwan tilapia, along with the butterfly orchid, oolong tea and mangos, as flagship agricultural exports.
Even as tilapia's reputation improves, aquaculture is facing criticism for using too much ground water and contributing to soil deterioration. Chiang Fu-sung, for one, thinks it is not fair to put all the blame on aquaculture, however, since the manufacturing sector uses much more ground water than fish farmers. Wong thinks that farmers would benefit from clear government policy. "Tell me it's now official policy that Taiwan is giving up aquaculture and I can live with it," he says. "But it's not fair that you get the fish and I get the blame."
Chiang also points out that the controlled environment of a fishpond allows for a stable alternative to the changing seas. "Pollution and overfishing are exhausting natural resources, so aquaculture will eventually be the most reliable supplier of aquatic products," Chiang says. Besides, with such a varied history over the last half century, the tenacious fish, under any name, will continue to play a lively part in Taiwan's aquaculture.