Smoked salmon Socialists is a gibe that hasn't been heard recently. Did it arise from our own political scene, or was it a borrowing from the English? Smoked salmon now, of course, with the huge industry of fish-farming, brings salmon, smoked or otherwise, within the range of more and more people. No-one, as far as memory goes, threw any pejorative remarks about another, much dearer, fish product - caviar. No doubt our fish farmers will get around to the possibilities of the fish that produces it - the sturgeon.
Apparently this fish, of which there are many varieties, was long netted by the French in the area of the Garonne, and fished for its flesh only. Everything changed after the arrival in France of emigres from the Russian Revolution. They told the people, the fisher folk, of the area, what a treasure they had in the bodies of the female sturgeon, and taught them how to prepare the precious eggs. As soon as the fish were landed, the female was slit open (alive) and the eggs were passed through a strainer to separate them from the membranes to which they were attached; later they were salted. The French magazine in which this appeared claimed that in the past, the flesh was valued, but the eggs were thrown to the pigs along with other intestines.
Anyway, what is described by the magazine as "le tout Paris" caught on to the idea that in the Garonne or Charentes area caviar could be had in the hotels and inns for a tenth of what would be paid in Maxim's of Paris. After a long period, the luck ran out. In view of falling catches, the fishermen had to decide to stop fishing the sturgeon. Since 1982 it is prohibited in all French waters. And maybe should be prohibited likewise in all European waters.
But here comes our old friend the fish farmer in the same region. Since 1995 a company has been producing sturgeon in ponds and lakes as fish to be eaten and as the bearers of caviar. The sturgeon type (of Siberian origin, the head of the company says), matures at six or seven years instead of the traditional 15.
In 1996 they sold 50 tonnes of fish to wholesalers or restaurants, fresh or in the form of smoked fillets. But caviar is the goal. In 1996, they got 50 kilos; in 1997 they will have reached 150 kilos of the valuable eggs, and, in two years, says the company head, when the stocks have reached full maturity, two or three tons of caviar will be produced annually. The price? Don't ask.
You never know what might happen here. Or be happening already.