Genetically Altered Salmon Get Closer to the Table

[Ed Barrow]

The Food and Drug Administration is seriously considering whether to approve the first genetically engineered animal that people would eat — salmon that can grow at twice the normal rate.

The developer of the salmon has been trying to get approval for a decade. But the company now seems to have submitted most or all of the data the F.D.A. needs to analyze whether the salmon are safe to eat, nutritionally equivalent to other salmon and safe for the environment, according to government and biotechnology industry officials. A public meeting to discuss the salmon may be held as early as this fall.

Some consumer and environmental groups are likely to raise objections to approval. Even within the F.D.A., there has been a debate about whether the salmon should be labeled as genetically engineered (genetically engineered crops are not labeled).

The salmon’s approval would help open a path for companies and academic scientists developing other genetically engineered animals, like cattle resistant to mad cow disease or pigs that could supply healthier bacon. Next in line behind the salmon for possible approval would probably be the “enviropig,” developed at a Canadian university, which has less phosphorus pollution in its manure.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/business/26salmon.html?ref=science

[Chulanowa]

1. These things would completely wipe out wild salmon

Farmed fish escape from their cages all the damned time, and since they're always well-fed, they always out-compete the native fish. Now if we combine that with MATURING TWICE AS FAST, these fuckers are a natural disaster waiting to happen to salmon worldwide.

[obxhead]

2. If this is approved it MUST be pushed for labeling as it will

set the precedent for all future GM seafood and meat.

Although I think they just need to stop this from the start.

[Better Today]

3. I don't see a difference between this and the hybrids of chickens and turkeys

that we all have no problem eating even though they are engineered hybrids with breasts so large they can't even stand up and walk around.

Much ado about nothing. The idea that these would be somehow bad for natural salmon, ...I guess I can't say, but if they are farmed as it seems they'd be, how would they effect natural salmon at all. AND at least around here, much of the fish stocks are coming from fish hatcheries and haven't been natural in decades. Very rare to get a rainbow trout with pink meat in the rivers around here.

[Odin2005]

4. GMOs are the thing that gives the technophobes the vapors the most.

Monsanto does some greedy dumb shit and all of a sudden all GMOs are evil. I like to remind these people that near all insulin for diabetics comes from GMO E. coli.