Two Maryland seafood processors said there’s a delicate balancing act in controlling invasive species like blue catfish, and that proposed legislation threatens that balance. They also described what’s been a brutal stretch as bad weather, poor market conditions and new regulations threaten the livelihood of one of the state’s oldest industries.
Amanda Williams of BSA Seafood in Grasonville and Patrick Welsh Jr. of Reliant Fish Company in Jessup were part of a coalition this week that opposed federal legislation linking invasive blue catfish — a species that environmental and agricultural officials say feasts on blue crabs, rockfish and oysters — to pet food processors.
U.S. Rep. Sarah Elfreth, who introduced the Mitigation Action and Watermen Support Act of 2026, or MAWS Act, said there’s “a mutual interest in getting invasive blue catfish out of the Bay.” “That is why for well over a year, my team and I have had meaningful and productive conversations with stakeholders, including over a dozen meetings and calls with seafood processors from across the watershed, to shape this bipartisan legislation into what it is today, with substantial changes over time responsive to the feedback from every corner of this industry,” Elfreth said in a statement to The Baltimore Sun.
Williams said the legislation is well-intentioned, but misses the mark. “We’ve spent years marketing blue catfish as a premium seafood product, and framing it as a pet food ingredient undercuts all of that work,” she said. “We’re also already sending our processing byproduct to a facility that handles rendering, so the idea of bringing in an outside recipient selected subsidized by the government to pay above-market prices for whole fish isn’t innovation, it’s market distortion that puts small processors like us at a real disadvantage.”
She said seafood processors feel like they were left out of key discussions. “We want invasive blue catfish out of the bay as much as anyone — but the path forward needs to work with this industry, not against it,” she said.
Welsh said the MAWS Act leapfrogs the market to pay the fishing industry, but leaves seafood processors behind. “The dogfood people are already getting product from us, so what sense does it make? All you’re gonna do is take that product away from us if the fishermen go directly to the dogfood processors,” he said.
Welsh described a delicate balancing act in fishing what’s essentially become an invasive species. “You want sustainability in that we want this thing to continue. We want to manage it. We want to control it as best we can, so you don’t eradicate it,” he said. He said getting rid of the species entirely would hurt the processing industry, the fishing industry and consumers.
So, now, the goal has shifted to managing Blue Cats as a resource. That's probably for the best; there is effectively zero chance that any control efforts will actually eliminate them from the system; at best we might control the population and mitigate the amount of gamefish and gamefish food they consume.
As for the charge that using them as pet food will somehow degrade the brand, and cause them to be less sought for human use, I ain't worried. Most of our pet food is made from meat that is also used for human consumption, beef, pork, turkey, lamb, tuna, and so on. I\m not turning down a nice piece of Ahi because tuna get used in catfood. There's still plenty Blue Cats to supply both supermarkets and pet food processors. We simply need high enough prices to support the fishery. We can worry about depleting the Chesapeake Bay system of them until we see evidence of a shortage.
FWIW, wild caught Chesapeake Blue Catfish are excellent table fare.
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