The body of a basa fish is stout and heavy.

Basa fish feed on plants.

They are often labeled in North America and Australia as "basa fish" or "bocourti".

On January 11, 2010, it announced initial success in introducing a new food source, the Basa fish, for the critically malnourished nation of Haiti.

Lawmakers from Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Louisiana say Vietnamese basa fish are being dumped on the market.

The basa fish, Pangasius bocourti, is a type of catfish in the family Pangasiidae.

Pangasius bocourti (Basa fish)

As a result, the Vietnamese exporters of this fish now label their products sold in the U.S. as "basa fish."

Senator Tim Hutchinson, Republican of Arkansas, said the Food and Drug Administration had improperly let basa fish be labeled and sold as catfish.

Local dishes include the standard Vietnamese fare as well as some variations on the area specialties (for example basa fish, mắm thái, and thot not coconuts).

Long Xuyen is a very developed city in merchandising (mainly in rice trading) and processing fish industry (such as basa fish) with more than six plants and 10,000 workers.

Vietnam should stop labeling imported basa fish as catfish and thereby end what he calls its unfair piggybacking on an industry built from scratch by farmers here and in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.

Fishing communities along the Mekong river produce over 1 million tons of basa fish annually and livelihoods and fish production will suffer from saltwater intrusion resulting from rising sea level and dams.

Other related shark catfish may occasionally be falsely labeled as basa fish, including Pangasianodon hypophthalmus (iridescent shark) and Pangasius pangasius (yellowtail catfish).

O Map This authentic place serves up classic Vietnamese beef noodle soup, banh xeo (a kind of pancake with prawns, chicken and vegetables) and wonderful pan-fried basa fish with lemongrass and shallots.

They maintain that the Vietnamese fish is really basa fish, whatever that is, and that labeling it as catfish is, in the words of Hugh Warren, executive vice president of the C.F.A., the equivalent of "selling kangaroo meat as sirloin."

In the UK, the species is known mainly as "river cobbler", with "basa" also being used on occasion.

Basa has become fairly common in the UK under the name "Vietnamese river cobbler" or just "river cobbler".