Posts Tagged ‘AquaBounty’
Salmon will be first GM animal available for consumption
Jetliner carrying one fish to market
A salmon that grows at twice the normal rate is set to be the first genetically modified (GM) animal available for human consumption.
Usually Atlantic salmon do not grow during the winter and take three years to fully mature. But by implanting genetic material from an eel-like species called ocean pout that grows all year round, US scientists have managed to make the fish grow to full size in 18 months.
They hope that the sterile GM salmon can offer an efficient and safe way to breed salmon in fish farms, so that the wild fish can be left in the oceans.
US watchdog the Food and Drug Administration is currently considering whether the GM Atlantic salmon, called AquAdvantage, is safe to eat. The fish could be on supermarket shelves within a year…
But Lord Melchett, policy director at the Soil Association, said the new technology is not worth the risk.
“Once you have bombarded an animal with other genes, the DNA is unstable, and there is no guarantee these fish remain sterile. It poses far too great a risk to wild salmon. A fish that grows that quickly is likely to lose some of its environmental benefits. There is no such thing as a free salmon lunch and we will pay the price,” he said.
I hope he knows more about soil than he apparently does about genomics.
And I have to laugh over the Telegraph’s headline. I can picture this giant salmon lurching through the aisles of a supermarket. When in fact the growers are aiming at bringing the farmed fish to market size sooner – not larger.
Such foolishness and sophistry.
