September 2, 2010
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GE Fish
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on August 25, 2010, that it may approve a GE salmon for human consumption.
You can write to the FDA instantly by clicking here!
The GE Atlantic salmon being considered was developed by AquaBounty Technologies and is genetically engineered to produce growth hormones year-round, creating a fish the company claims grows at twice the normal rate. This could allow factory fish farms to crowd the salmon into pens and still get high production rates.
August 27, 2010 - Joint Press Statement: Coalition Demands FDA Deny Approval of Controversial GE Fish: FDA Considers Approval of GE Salmon--the First GE Food Animal--Yet Fails to Inform the Public of Environmental and Economic Risks.
Now that the U.S. has almost approved it, the company AquaBounty is now preparing to ask Health Canada to approve the GE salmon. August 27, 2010: Developer of genetically engineered salmon eyes Canadian regulators
Canadian regulators are not prepared to evaluate GE fish properly. Health Canada and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans have abandoned its own work to develop regulations specific to GE fish (see the Auditor General's report).
The development of transgenic salmon with accelerated growth rates was patented by two University professors, Dr. Garth Fletcher from Memorial University of Newfoundland and Dr. Choy Hew of the University of Toronto, as their “invention”.
This fish is designed for the aquaculture industry and escape by GE fish into the wild is one major concern. The Royal Society of Canada's Expert Panel on the Future of Food Biotechnology was very clear that the risks of GE fish escape required regulations against ocean pens.
Industry argues that the GE fish will be at a disadvantage in the wild but Purdue University biologists argue that transgenic fish, despite their ecological disabilities, would not only be able to compete with wild fish but could drive them to extinction. They call this the Trojan gene effect. "Possible ecological risks of transgenic organism release when transgenes affect mating success: Sexual selection and the Trojan gene hypothesis," by W.M. Muir and R.D. Howard. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 96:13853 13856, 1999.
On March 27, 2001 Greenpeace activists sealed off the A/F Protein research facility containing genetically engineered salmon in Prince Edward Island. Click here for information on this action.
