A GM salmon which grows twice as fast as ordinary fish could become the first genetically-modified animal in the world to be declared officially safe to eat, after America’s powerful food-safety watchdog ruled it posed no major health or environmental risks.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it could not find any valid scientific reasons to ban the production of GM Atlantic salmon engineered with extra genes from two other fish species – a decision that could soon lead to its commercial production.
The verdict clears one of the last remaining hurdles for GM salmon to be lawfully sold and eaten in the US and will put pressure on salmon producers in Britain and Europe to follow suit.
Successive chief scientists to the UK Government, as well as science institutions such as the Royal Society, have endorsed the concept of GM technology as a tool for increasing food production in the 21st Century, but consumer opposition has so far blocked the approval of GM food for the dinner table.
Several government bodies including the advisory committees on the release of GM organisms and on novel foods and processes would have to review the technology before it was approved in the UK.
Supporters of the technology believe the GM salmon will make it not only easier and cheaper to produce farmed salmon, but that it could also be better for the environment because they can be grown on land-based fish farms.
Sir John Beddington, the current chief scientist, warned two years ago of a “perfect storm” of growing human numbers, climate change and food shortages, where it would be “very hard to see how it would be remotely sensible to justify not using new technologies such as GM”.
GM opponents, however, argue that the introduction of the fast-growing salmon creates risks for both human health and the environment. They also argue that the salmon will be the start of concerted efforts to create other GM animals for human consumption, which could raise serious questions about animal welfare.
Read the full article, The Independent here
• AVAAZ.ORG is currently collecting signatures on a petition calling for this salmon not to be approved by the FDA:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_frankenfish_r/
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Comments (8)
Tasmanian salmon are allready genetically engineered by temperature treating eggs to make them triploid.
Indeed.. It was many years ago so I can’t recall the gory details, but a friend was working on the salmon farms down the Huon told me I would never eat them again if I saw the mutated deformities. How many heads does a farmed salmon need anyway? Farmed fish look like they have swam down from the hills behind New Norfolk.
During my time on the Animal Ethics Committee, one of the chronic research issues was management of disease in salmon farms. Fish growing twice as fast and eating proportionally more of other species is just what nature needs.
John Hayward
I read that atlantic salmon farmed overseas have been found with enough toxic chemicals in the fillets to warrant a consumption warning.
The food the salmon get is apparently the culprit, not the water.
Which begs the question, what do they feed the farmed fish in Taz? The same stuff as overseas? Have the Taz fish been tested for PCBs etc?
It would be good to know if the Taz stuff is OK - it would also be a huge marketing win for the local product.
The US Food and Drug Administration claim they could not find any valid scientific reasons to ban the production of GM Atlantic salmon engineered with extra genes from 2 other fish species, my contention here is did they indeed ‘earnestly seek to find any reasons why this buggering around with Atlantic salmon should not go ahead?’
Once again we observe how the corporate forces have combined themselves with the American FDA, who nowadays mostly do what they can to oblige the American major food manufacturers and distributors.
Even if it does entail some sort of reduction in testing and trial times toward whatever new super beauty food product that has some element of being messed with, then in tandem with any amount of gross promotion toward said food item that it becomes almost impossible to prevent such inspiring corporate chicanery to obtain the approval the launch yet another scientifically molested natural food source.
These processes are more for the pecuniary pursuits rather than to provide any form of humanitarian ‘feed the world’ prospects.
I believe we would all be better situated without this ongoing desire to mess with the forces of what pure nature already delivers in its abundance.
It matters not to the shareholders of these consumer strangling corporations, as long as their is the sniff of a decent dividend in the wind or with the rising in value of these sorts of shares peculiar to these mighty-fine God Bless America multi-national corporate institutions. (I note that the American ideology ignores whether any other countries on our planet should be allowed access to participate in the amount of blessings available from him upstairs.)
As sure as Summer follows Spring there will be more of this type of food production that will soon become an altered or doctored natural food bearing some sort of mutation or and genetic modification in the pipeline.
I often do wonder if him upstairs really does restrict himself to just blessing Americans to exclusion of all other countries?
If you want to relegate Tasmania beyond economic hope to a backward welfare state, go GM and lose all respected natural agricultural brand competitive advantage you have left.
Read about Monsanto regional market destructions.
Read Tasmanian Government’s own reports:
http://www.development.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/67736/MF_Tas_GMO-free_Marketing_Advantage_2.pdf
The issue that the Tasmanian salmon industry has is that the waters become too warm for the salmon , the introduction of aqua advantage salmon would be of little benefit to the Tasmanian industry as they have been engineered to be grown in cold waters through the introduction of a gene from a species of fish known as ocean pout.
Also there are no genetically engineered salmon in Tasmania, it is incorrect to call the triploid salmon genetically modified as there is no insertion of a modified gene or gene from another organism .
On another note, the title of this article is a bit misleading isn’t it??
I did read thru the report commissioned by the Tas Govt, thanks for the reference Tigerquoll, it said there has been a small negative loss to the state from having the GMO moratorium and removal of the GMO ban would have little significant impact on the State.