In Oregon, as above with BillTre, Crayfish, or Crawdads, as we called em, are VERY Tasty. Similar to crab and shrimp although not as 'sweet' as lobster. Both the tail and claws provide meat, although it takes a fair number of them to get a decent meal. As kids we would go in the streams and catch em by hand (or with forked stick and hand, so as to not get pinched) and find them under large rocks, along the underside of logs etc. We would collect whole buckets full which would be then tossed into a large pot of already boiling water with some salt and spices added. It was always a Big Thing at the family picnic, and afterwards we would put the remains, shells and leftovers on the dirty plates/pots and leave em in the creek overnight, and they would be scoured clean and half-full of live, rather happy crawdads where we obviously did not get em all, and they came to the feast.
I would imagine that if raised right, and responsibly, in a way that they could NOT get free (desert aquaculture?) as long as they are fed properly and treated decent, they should be able to provide a very decent food source, and rather cheaply since they seem to eat most anything. I would manage their diets to provide best flavor for harvest time, but it would certainly save the time of having to 'sex' the critters to make sure you still have a viable breeding stock of males and females: They are self-cloning females so they are all identical, to a close degree.
The Major problem would be the fact that they Are invasive. I would assume that in some places there are bounties on them, if not, there should be, and at the very least set them so as that there is No Limit on that specific species for harvest. Also, all meat from such critters, if done commercially, should consist of pre-shelled meat so as to not have the possiblity of eggs sticking to carcass in market and then getting inadvertently tossed into a stream, and if lucky, hatch and restart a new line there. It is really something to think about, but in some places they may be used to clean up certain types of biological contamination, if they are able to stay contained.
But, they are here, and apparently not going away, so how to deal with them certainly needs studied. But, just like Asians buying two live carp, one to eat, one to let go, as ritual for prosperity, sometimes humans spread these things to places they should not be, unintentionally, and unknowingly.
