Sustainable Seafood, Organic Bonanza

Now here's a winning story all around:

A Illinois-based aquaculture company plans to start a tilapia aquaculture operation in New Mexico that will turn "waste" from the fish farm into a host of organic products.

When it's up and running, AquaRanch Industries will raise 300,000 tilapia each year and market “every produce that’s grown in New Mexico,” company president Garth Watson said at a seminar on organic food held recently at the Clovis, New Mexico Civic Center. He told the same thing to Curry County, N.M. commissioners at a public hearing on the project.

The business expects to employ 150 people in its first year, and up to 500 in five years.

And I love this quote:

“We need to have more businesses that use what we have and continue to recycle what we have,” said Affordable Pest Control owner Robert Rosales, who is looking to get a pest control contract with the fish farm. “Otherwise, we won't have any resources left for our kids and grandkids.”

U.S.-farmed tilapia -- fed a vegetarian diet, so it's low on the food web -- is a "Best Choice" of the Seafood Watch program at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and of other organizations that evaluate sustainable seafood. And it's increasingly popular with professional chefs and home cooks, too.

Bon appétit!