In this undated photo from the University of Missouri, Joe Deters, a researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey, holds up one of five silver carp that had jumped in the researchers’ boat on the Missouri River.
Making good food of bad fish! This is exactly what University of Missouri-Columbia food scientist Andrew Clarke is doing to control the voracious carp that are posing a major ecological threat to Midwestern rivers and lakes!
Andrew has developed a “carp cake” made from raw, ground fish to make a money-saving feed to the St. Louis zoo’s animals. Being one of the nation’s largest, the zoo annually buys more than 60 tons of fish for feeding its animals — mostly species such as mackerel, herring and capelin. The prices for this food range from 30 cents to 70 cents per pound!
Thus, by making food cakes out of these carps — instead of using chemicals, poisons to kill the carps, that may eventually kill other fauna of the water — — zoo officials believe they could also — save money by feeding the carp.
