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, August 26, 2019:
GMO Salmon Could Forever Change the Way We Produce Food
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.
"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
