Vietnam's fish sauce industry key to Phu Quoc island's economy
Vietnam's fish sauce industry key to Phu Quoc island's economy
By Robert Templer
PHU QUOC ISLAND, Vietnam (AFP): An uncorked bottle has a
bouquet that hits you like a mule's kick and a taste that takes
some acquiring, but on Phu Quoc this brown, syrupy liquid is
regarded as nothing less than an elixir.
The Singapore-sized tropical island off Vietnam's southern
coast is home to the premier manufacturers of nuoc mam, a pungent
fish sauce as essential to the country's cuisine as olive oil in
Italy or wine in France.
Making nuoc mam, like producing wine, is deceptively simple.
Fish are dumped into vast wooden barrels, churned up with shovel
loads of rough sea salt, covered with water and left to ferment.
But achieving a high quality sauce is an elusive process that
depends on the catch of a particular small silvery fish known as
ca com that is found around the island.
"We use only one kind of fish and no preservatives or
chemicals," said Truong Van Hoa, owner of one of Phu Quoc's 80
fish sauce firms.
"We leave the fish in the barrels for a year to produce the
best sauce whereas others just ferment it for a few months," said
Hoa, who proudly shows off his quality certificates from the
Pasteur Institute in Ho Chi Minh City.
Most prized is the first nuoc mam run off from each of the
three-metre (10-foot) barrels kept in dark warehouses filled with
eyewatering fumes. To make cheaper sauce, the barrels are topped
up with water for up to two further fermentations.
Nuoc mam has been a center of Phu Quoc's economy for a century
but business has boomed since the end of the 1980s with 80
companies now making sauce to meet rising demand from the
mainland and export markets.
But a shadow is looming over the large riverside houses built
in recent years by factory owners who are the richest members of
Phu Quoc's 60,000 population.
Catches are declining off the island as inland waters are
depleted of fish and now a 10-day fishing trip will likely only
net three tons of ca com, rather than the 10 tons vessels could
catch a decade ago.
Just as worrying for a business that relies on its name and
reputation are the manufacturers from as far away as Thailand,
who take cheaper nuoc mam made from low quality mixtures of fish
and label it as coming from Phu Quoc.
"Fake sauces harm our reputation and eat into our sales," said
Hoang Minh, owner of a factory. "We have asked local governments
across the country to check sauce sales and punish those selling
fake Phu Quoc nuoc mam."
Thai companies are singled out for their sales of fake sauce
and for taking inferior Vietnamese brands and repackaging them
with Thai labels to cater to a widespread belief in Vietnam that
imported goods are superior.
Manufacturers also complain that they are forced to sell their
sauce through trading firms in Ho Chi Minh City who bottle and
market it, taking a lion's share of the profits.
But grouping together for economies of scale in production and
marketing are out of the question, according to Vu Thanh Lap, one
of the island's wealthier manufacturers.
"It's impossible to standardize or industrialize our
production. Each maker has its own traditional way of making the
sauce," he said.
"The color and smells are very varied and everyone can tell
the difference," he said with the indignant air of a Champagne
vintner who has had his product compared to sparkling grape
juice.