Tag: alligator
(UNIONTOWN, Alabama) — Harvest Select, the Alabama seafood company with catfish as its main attraction, has acquired Birmingham-based Steel City Seafood, expanding its overall operations and product lines to include a full spectrum of wild Gulf-caught seafood and farmed products.
Lance Nacio was raised surrounded by alligators. He now returns each year to a lease a few hundred yards from where he was raised, to harvest the large semiaquatic reptile during the state’s annual gator season.
You can call the Louisiana alligator a lot of things. But, an environmentalist responsible for saving the coastal wetlands – really?
Yes, really.
The alligator is one of the prime reasons driving the conservation of coastal wetlands, according to Mark Shirley, specialist for Louisiana State University (LSU) Agricultural Center (AgCenter) and field agent for Louisiana Sea Grant.
“The meat from farm raised and wild alligators are “both great”. Farm meat is more uniform in size than wild, so Gator Wings -the front legs of a gator – are all about the same size, a bonus for restaurants,” says Mark Shirley of Louisiana State University Agricultural Center and Sea Grant.
You’ve heard the expression that “quality is job one” when it comes to making cars. That same thinking applies to raising alligators and delivering flawless skins to market. “Farm-raised gators is all about the quality,” said Craig Sagrera, of Vermilion Gator Farm, a family-run business. Given the nature of alligators, however, ensuring quality is no easy task.
It’s wild alligator harvest season in many of the Gulf States. Gulf Seafood News will publish a four part in-depth look at the industry. Television shows such as “Swamp People” have raised the awareness of the benefits of alligator meat to an ever-widening audience. For the industry this has been both a blessing and a curse – prices are at an all time high, but meat is often in short supply.
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