Thursday, September 12, 2019

Here Come the Frankenfish: GMO Salmon Coming to a Store Near You

They absolutely must not allow these things to get anywhere near ocean salmon (or Great Lakes salmon for that matter).
And though the writer takes a blithely upbeat look at this development, we are posting it for information purposes only.

From Freethink, :
Bioengineered fish have been known to cause mixed feelings. Unnatural, right? Well, after 30 years of debate on whether we should be eating “Frankenfish,” this funky food source is finally coming to a store near you. Like it or not, GMO salmon and possibly other genetically engineered animal meats will soon be on the shelves of your local supermarket. And, these new futuristic foods may be revolutionizing the global food system right in front of our eyes. 
AquaBounty, the biotechnology company based in Massachusetts and known for its R&D on GMO salmon, recently received its first shipment of genetically modified salmon eggs. Once harvested, these will become the first ever of its kind approved for consumption in the United States. 
“We’re going to see a 2 billion person increase in the population in the next 30 years. So we’re going to have to feed 28% more people. You start with that premise, and then you think how is seafood going to play a role?”
Sylvia Wulf , CEO, AquaBounty
As wild caught salmon struggles to keep pace with our growing world population (and fish-eating enthusiasts), AquaBounty and others like it can fill the void. Scientists are able to grow fish to market weight in half the time of conventional salmon.



https://www.freethink.com/media/pages/videos/gmo-salmon/3041005949-1566589783/04-dna-0-00-08-16-copy-1600x500.png
"We injected a growth hormone gene from chinook salmon and a promoter sequence from an antifreeze protein gene from ocean pout. The promoter sequence (a fragment of DNA) acts like an on-switch for the chinook gene so that growth hormone is produced year-round instead of just seasonally (spring and summer)."
Dave Conley , Communications, AquaBounty
These super-fast growers have a few major advantages. First, they need significantly less food. 
As AquaBounty CEO Sylvia Wulf puts it, “they have an improved feed conversion ratio. For every pound of feed that you put in, you get more than a pound of meat out. If you think about cattle, it takes eight pounds of feed to create one pound of meat. With our fish, you put a pound in and you get one and a quarter out.”

And second, you can simply grow a ton more of them. AquaBounty grows their fish in big tanks and the facility is high tech. Tight controls on the conditions prevents disease and water is recirculated for extreme efficiency.

Sounds great right? It’s actually been quite the uphill battle for the AquaBounty team. Genetically modified anything is very controversial. Two big questions needed to be answered: 1. What if they get out? 2. Are they safe to eat?

To address the first, we interviewed Peter Bowyer, a farm manager at AquaBounty. Besides the facility being in Indiana and nowhere close to native salmon, Peter explains that there is a very high level of physical containment: “For every possible escape route out of the facility we have layers of containment. There are physical barriers to prevent the passage of the fish with numerous redundant layers.”

On top of the physical barriers, nearly every single fish is sterile. This makes it pretty tough for the Frankenfish to escape and spread....MORE 
Also at Freethink:
The First GMO Salmon is Coming to a Store Near You

And in completely unrelated news, from the journal Nature:
Transgenic Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes Transfer Genes into a Natural Population