Launched in 2022 by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR), the Choose Copi initiative aims to promote invasive carp—a group of fish that severely threaten the American Midwest’s ecosystem—as an appetizing dish for American consumers.
In the United States, invasive carp are colloquially known as a trash fish. However, according to the former invasive carp advisor at The White House, increasing domestic consumption of the species is the best way to protect midwestern waterways from the ecological havoc they commit. That is why the Choose Copi initiative changed the culinary name of invasive carp from bighead, silver, black, or grass to Copi—a play on the word copious.
The IDNR estimated that the name change would increase the favorability of invasive carp as a fish to eat, causing its cumulative removal rates in Illinois to increase by over 300%.
Even though the popularity of the fish has grown domestically, the harvest of invasive carp presents a fruitful and prospective export market, primarily to Asia. In 2022 alone, China imported almost $5 million dollars worth of carp, but only 0.1% of it was American.
Looking to fill this gap, Angie Yu, president of Two Rivers Fisheries, the largest exporter of invasive carp in the US, opened her business in 2012 intending to process and sell carp to China, where the fish not only holds cultural symbolism but is eaten as an everyday family food. In a 2022 interview with Louisville Public Media, Yu stated, “Just like in the US, you eat chicken, right? In China, we eat carp.”
In another interview with the US-China Business Council, Yu highlighted how China’s 10-year ban on fishing in the Yangtze River created a large demand for wild-caught carp. Yu added that since most of the carp that are eaten in China are farm-raised, the wild-caught invasive carp of the Midwest are much better tasting.
However, unsubsidized barriers of entry, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the China-United States trade war forced Two Rivers Fisheries to transition away from international trade and try to market more toward Americans. Two Rivers Fisheries is now featured on the Choose Copi initiative’s website.
Invasive carp were originally introduced to US lakes and ponds from China and other East Asian countries in the 1970s as a strategy to combat algae blooms. However, as a non-native species, they dominated competition in local US ecosystems, causing uncontrollable reproduction. Moreover, heavy rains eventually flooded these closed-local systems, paving the way to major US waterways like the Mississippi River, where they now proliferate.
As of 2024, invasive carp are abundant throughout the Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee, Illinois, and Cumberland rivers. These fish cause tremendous ecological damage, and local, state, and federal agencies spend hundreds of millions of dollars to control their population.
The Ohio River at the Illinois-Kentucky border. (Image: Jacob Erhart, East West Center in Washington)
The IDNR estimated that an invasive carp breach into the Great Lakes would cause extensive damage to North America’s aquatic ecosystem and several midwestern industries. To prevent this, the IDNR and other midwestern natural resources departments implemented more conventional measures of invasive carp population control, like the carp’s “bounties” or complex underwater electrical barriers, as seen in the Chicago River.
In the last five years, some departments looked to China and its centuries-long experience in managing invasive carp. In 2020, Kentucky implemented an IDNR strategy called the “Unified Fishing Method,” which utilized the traditional Chinese fishing technique of using vibrations to corral carp into huge nets. Nevertheless, the Choose Copi initiative remained the most effective way to control the fish.
Jacob Erhart is a Fall 2024 Young Professional at the East-West Center in Washington. He is currently a fourth-year undergraduate student at the American University School of International Service, where he specializes in foreign policy and national security with a focus on East Asia.