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Saving Cherished Slow Foods, One Product
at a Time
Cape May Salt Oyster
Cape May Salt Oyster, courtesy of SF Foundation for Biodiversity
The town of Cape May was once filled with large heaps of
shells bleached white by the sun and its port was lined with
long buildings facing the water. Oysters once streamed out
of here: they were collected in barrels, loaded onto trucks
and dispatched to Philadelphia. The shells are all that remain
of the past glory of Delaware Bay, sheltered by the slender
peninsula ending at Cape May, where Delaware, New Jersey and
Pennsylvania meet.
In Colonial Philadelphia the sellers used to clatter up and
down the
streets, which were often paved with shells; the oysters were
eaten raw, in
stew, preserved in brine or fried and served with chicken
salad. Back then,
places selling oysters were as common as present-day pizzerias.
Overfishing, pollution, increased water temperatures and
parasitic diseases
are responsible for the crisis which began during the Great
Depression and
saw oysters decrease in both number and size. While the estuary
was home to
1,400 boats with 2,300 men in 1879, there are now fewer than
50 boats and
150 men involved in cultivating and gathering oysters. Some
studies maintain
that the oyster farms in the upper bay were already destroyed
during the
Second World War due to sailing boats being replaced by motor
boats. But
today the bay is cleaner, partly due to environmental programs
implemented
by the three states and partly due to the decline of heavy
industry in
Philadelphia. These reasons encourage optimism that local
oysters can once
again flourish in their habitat.
The Presidium
The Cape May Salt Oyster has become a Slow Food Presidium
to maintain a low
environmental-impact system of cultivation tried and tested
in France.
According to this technique, oyster sprats are produced in
hatcheries and
then placed on nets hanging from racks stretching across the
shallows
exposed to the tide. These oysters, 'planted' in the sea,
feed naturally by
filtering ocean water and are not given any artificial feed
or antibiotics.
The success of these new sustainable farms is a sign of the
bay's recovered
health, which Slow Food wishes to promote by supporting the
activity of the
few remaining fishermen and significantly developing the local
and
international market for oysters. A first promotional initiative
has already
been accomplished with the Hotel Plaza in New York serving
raw Cape May
oysters on large trays of ice in its Oyster Bar.
Production Area: New Jersey
State, Delaware Bay, Cape May
Presidium Coordinators:
Jim Weaver
Slow Food Convivium Leader
Tel. +1 609 452 1515 -jim@trepiani.com
Hans-Jakob Werlen
Slow Food Convivium Leader
Tel. +1 610 328 8612 - hwerlen1@swarthmore.edu
Click here to return to the full
list of USA Presidium.
Click here it visit the Cape May Salt Oyster Ark of Taste page. |
