CSMNews story
(http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0310/p15s02-lifo.html)
How do you like your iguana?
By Kelly Hearn | Correspondent of The Christian Science
Monitor
WASHINGTON – On a blustery afternoon, a delivery truck creeps
through a cluster of ethnic food warehouses in northeast Washington
and parks by the section of dock belonging to Distribuidora
Cuscatlan, an importer of foods from El Salvador.
Frank Rodriguez, Cuscatlan's manager, walks past crates of rice
before stepping into a gargantuan stainless-steel freezer. He opens
a box that contains what many consider a culinary delicacy -
iguana.
For centuries, iguana has been consumed throughout Central America;
now it's showing up on a small but growing number of North American
dinner tables.
But El Salvadoran entrepreneurs and US businessmen like Mr.
Rodriguez - who supplies iguana to 60 markets in the Washington
area - are doing more than providing a fondly remembered "taste of
home" for Latinos now living in the US.
The budding market is also improving life in El Salvador. Raising
iguanas on farms for export provides much-needed jobs, and it
allows food to be grown while keeping the tropical rain forest
intact. The industry even aids in rebuilding wild iguana
populations, since many iguana farms periodically release part of
their stock into the wild.
The increasing availability of iguana meat is due to several
factors, including its reputation among Central Americans as a
cure-all for everything from colds to poor sexual
performance.
"People believe iguana meat does many things," says Alicia Chicas,
a Salvadoran immigrant who manages a small market in southern
Maryland. "That's why they are willing to pay."
Ms. Chicas thinks that one reason iguana has become easier to
obtain in the US is that the Salvadoran community here has become
wealthier over the years and able to afford it.
The meat is said to have a taste similar to chicken, but a bit
stronger and tougher. At $14 a pound (retail), or about $50 for the
average purchase, it isn't for ordinary suppers. Still, "the demand
for them is higher than we can provide," Rodriguez says.
Iguanas live principally on fruits, flowers, and leaves. Once
abundant through many parts of Central America, the tropical
lizard's populations have suffered from overhunting and habitat
destruction, causing the Salvadoran government, among others, to
clamp down on hunting them.
That's where iguana farms can help. Instead of reducing the wild
population, ranchers take advantage of the fact that the reptiles
typically live 40 to 50 feet above the ground in rain forests.
Farms hatch iguanas from eggs, grow them in a controlled
environment for seven months, and then release them into forested
areas on the farm. That way, local residents don't have to cut down
trees to raise food.
El Salvador's main iguana ranch is in Zacatecoluca, a city of about
30,000 people located in the south-central part of the country. It,
like other places, exports both the meat of garrobos (dark-skinned
male lizards) and iguanas (green-skinned females), which can now be
found next to chorizos and papusas in ethnic stores in the
US.
A consistent demand for the meat might spawn a healthy
micro-livestock industry in El Salvador that could breed jobs, says
René Antonio León Rodríguez, the country's ambassador to the US, in
a phone interview. Ambassador León hopes that iguana will join the
ranks of ostrich, emu, and bison, other alternative meats vying for
an increasing share of Americans' food dollars.
"It's good for your body, it's good for business, and it's good for
the environment," he says.
While businesses are beefing up operations to meet what they hope
is an expanding North American market, their eyes are also fixed on
Asian markets, where consumers accustomed to eating snake wouldn't
think twice about sinking their teeth into a garrobo.
"I talked to store owners who told me they sold out of iguana after
a newspaper article came out about iguana meat," says León. "But it
wasn't people from El Salvador who bought them out. It was
Asians."
Iguana entrepreneurs are looking beyond Asia, though, and even
beyond markets for frozen meat. León notes that some Salvadoran
businesspeople are taking on the hard task of perfecting recipes
for canned iguana soup, "which must be made by hand and with a lot
of effort."
For this reason, he adds, demand for the soup currently outstrips
supply. But it may be some time before cans of spicy iguana soup
show up on US grocery shelves, since meeting the demand isn't the
only obstacle exporters confront.
"We have iguana soup, but we don't have the proper license to
distribute it yet," says Rodriguez of Distribuidora.
He and his father had to wait three years to get a fish and
wildlife license from the Food and Drug Administration to
distribute frozen iguana meat. But when permission is granted to
distribute iguana soup, "we are ready," he promises.
