The coronavirus is impacting the crawfish industry.  The season saw a slow start before Carnival celebrations, and now people aren’t congregating for a crawfish boil because of the pandemic.

“The biggest thing you see, I believe, is the cancelation of events.  St. Patrick’s Day comes to mind.  That has hurt a lot on the retail side and then it hurts us.  The sales are not there,” said President of the Crawfish Research and Promotion Board David Savoy.

Savoy says the smaller communities are staying on par with normal rates of sales, but it’s the bigger cities where the sales are hurting most.

“Go to Houston, it is worse.  Go to Baton Rouge or you go to New Orleans, it is worse.  The panic seems to be worse where there is a bunch of people together.  Will it shut this whole thing down?  That’s yet to be seen,” said Savoy.

Savoy says the harvest of crawfish has been bountiful and the prices have been relatively low all season already, so he doesn’t anticipate this price going down much further.

“You can’t afford to do it any cheaper.  They are paying us a minimum price here.  The price they are paying at the retail level is totally different.  If you want some cheaper crawfish, find you a farmer,” said Savoy.

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