The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Thursday the company’s genetically engineered Atlantic salmon was as nutritious as the farm-raised ones and was safe for consumption.
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The decision comes years after the U.S.-based company applied for the permission to sell its fish to consumers, drawing criticism from a few who say there is too much uncertainty about the health of the product.
Prof Helen Sang of the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh said the approval by the FDA set a precedent.
AquAdvantage Salmon is engineered by the Massachusetts-based company AquaBounty. Genetic engineering is already widely used for crops, but the government until now has not considered allowing the consumption of modified animals.
Concerns have also focussed on whether the GM fish could breed with other salmon and spread their genes, if they were to escape into the wild.
The salmon has an added growth hormone from the Pacific Chinook salmon that allows that fish to produce growth hormone all year long.
The FDA said in 2010 that the modified salmon appears to be safe to eat, and said in 2012 that the salmon was unlikely to harm the environment. The FDA completed an environmental assessment to show that the salmon would not significantly impact the “human environment” in the US. “Genetically Engineered (GE) salmon has no business on our dinner plates”.
Opponents say consumers don’t want to eat genetically engineered seafood.
Critics have pressured retailers to reject the salmon, which they have labeled “Frankenfish”.
AquaBounty’s salmon was originally developed as a fast-growing variety by a group of Canadian public university scientists over a quarter of a century ago, and the company has been trying to get regulatory approval for nearly two decades, said Dr Alison Van Eenennaam of the University of California, Davis, who served on the 2010 FDA Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee which looked at the AquaBounty salmon. She called the FDA’s approval “potentially disastrous” and said she will swiftly push legislation to mandate labeling of the modified fish.
The approval doesn’t mean that the fish cna be bred or raised in the USA, and it will instead be farmed in special tanks in Canada and Panama.
The FDA found that the inserted genes were stable over several generations of fish and the genes did not have any unintended consequences or ill effects.
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To ensure the fish don’t escape, they must be contained using multiple physical barriers, including plumbing that filters out eggs and fish. Even if the fish did escape, they are sterile, so they could not breed in the wild, according to the FDA.
