Weekend® - Macau Daily Times

Weekend Times
24
Caviar at the Armen
Petrossian’s shop, the
world’s leading distributor
of caviar, in Paris
state controlled production, two things happened: economic interest
and the attraction of a forbidden fruit,” said Petrossian.
the caviar boom – also fuelled by the islamic revolution in iran
– led prices to collapse as the market was flooded with product selling
for as little as 100 euros per kilogramme, against a minimum of
1,400 euros today.
“During the worst years, in 1993 to 1995, we thought the fish was
going to disappear completely.”
But a decade on, Petrossian believes the CitEs effort has backfired.
since 2002 the convention has required the five Caspian sea producer
states – azerbaijan, iran, Kazakhstan, russia and turkmenistan
– to agree a small, sustainable quota for exports of stocks of the
fish eggs each year.
they have repeatedly failed to do, against a backdrop of regional
wrangling and rivalries – and last year trade in Beluga caviar was
halted altogether as they fell short of a deal.
this year the five agreed on a tiny quota – a total of three tonnes
– but even that was rejected as unsustainable by the European
Union.
meanwhile, sturgeon numbers in the Caspian are shrinking inexorably,
lost to the black market.
“We should have got local fishermen to manage the stocks – since
they would have had an economic interest in being good stewards,”
argued Petrossian, who set up a non-governmental group, the international
Caviar importers association (iCia), to lobby for a different
approach to the trade.
instead, by banning exports, he argues, the international community
deprived local communities of any incentive to protect the fish.
“it is a failure of CitEs. We haven’t managed to stabilise
world production and we did everything to destroy the market,”
he said. aFPW