The company says these faster-growing fish take pressure off wild fisheries and have fewer environmental impacts than regular farmed fish. “FDA’s approval of the AquAdvantage Salmon is an important step in this direction”. “With most products that are the first of its kind, we are very careful”, she says. In the case of the AquAdvantage Salmon, the FDA did not find any such differences. “Because the data and information evaluated show that AquAdvantage Salmon is not materially different from other Atlantic salmon, the FDA has determined that no additional labeling of food from AquaAdvantage Salmon is required”, the FDA says on its website. Genetic engineering is already widely used for crops, but the government until now has not allowed the consumption of modified animals. Consumers Union, the policy and advocacy arm of Consumer Reports, decried that decision.
Advertisement
The F.D.A. has issued a draft guidance on the voluntary labeling that indicates whether or not food has been derived from genetically engineered Atlantic salmon. Critics of FDA approval for the salmon have repeatedly raised such concerns.
Zohar said he agrees on the labeling, saying it should be done so consumers know and won’t stay away from salmon altogether, adding that there is no reason to avoid the new fish.
The FDA mandates that the fish may be raised only in land-based, contained hatchery tanks in two specific facilities in Canada and Panama. The fish will be female and sterile.
But those precautions aren’t enough for the fish’s opponents.
The salmon can not be grown in the USA, the FDA said. To stop it now, they’re organizing consumer boycotts.
“So [it’s] certainly an interesting development in the science of food, and I’ll be watching with great interest from the sidelines”. But, a few consumers are concerned that the fish will not bear the genetically-modified organism (“GMO”, for short) label in stores.
Major retailers like Target, Meijer, Aldi, Giant Eagle, Whole Foods and US conventional grocery chains Kroger and Safeway have reportedly agreed not to sell genetically engineered salmon.
Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/. The salmon, produced by “Aqua Advantage Salmon” grow faster. twice as fast as normal salmon. NPR’s Dan Charles reports.
Advertisement
25 years ago, a Massachusetts-based lab called AquaBounty created a new gene to inject into fertilized salmon eggs, which speeds up their growth rate and means less time from egg to dinner plate. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval ends a long struggle for AquaBounty Technologies. The ruling comes five years after the agency’s scientists announced that the fish was safe for human consumption.
