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Whole Foods, Trader Joe's Say No To Genetically Engineered Salmon

Madeline Morris |
April 1, 2013 | 6:47 p.m. PDT

Staff Reporter

You won't find this salmon at your local Trader Joe's (Peber the Swede, Creative Commons).
You won't find this salmon at your local Trader Joe's (Peber the Swede, Creative Commons).
All dressed up but nowhere to go. For 11 years. 

In 2001, a biotechnology company called AquaBounty submitted the world’s first application for genetically engineered salmon to the Food and Drug Administration. Since then, AquaBounty has been on an upstream journey against anti-GMO (genetically modified organism) activist groups. 

The FDA is now in its final review of AquaBounty’s “AquAdvantage” salmon, and the controversial current over GMO’s runs stronger than ever.

On March 20, several top food retailers announced that if the salmon were to be approved, they would not carry it. Whole Foods, Trader Joes, Aldi, and other retailers representing more than 2,000 stores across the United States have pledged their allegiance to the newly launched Campaign for Genetically Engineered (GE)-Free Seafood. The coalition comprises consumer, health, food safety, and fishing groups lined up against AquAdvantage. 

The genetically altered fish are infused with a gene that causes them to grow at twice the rate of conventionally farmed salmon. According to AquaBounty Technologies, this will provide for an environmentally sustainable alternative to current farmed salmon; they are our future.

Are they really the future of food production, or are they cannibalistic “Franken-fish?” Grassroots activists surely have a sense of humor, but they seem dead serious when they say that the salmon will pose serious harm to the environment and wild fish populations, claiming that the FDA has not done due diligence in assessing possible risk factors. 

Friends of the Earth, an environmental organization, says that should the GE “Franken-fish” escape from their land-based facilities, (an impossibility, according to AquaBounty,) they will exhibit aggressive behavior due to their growth hormones and will decimate wild salmon populations. 

Eric Hoffman, food and technology policy campaigner for Friends of the Earth, lists further cause for concern. “We do not have proper regulations on the book to govern the introduction of GE animals or crops to properly assess their risks, nor do we have a proper legal liability framework if something goes wrong. The US uses antiquated laws to regulate GE products- the genetically engineered salmon is being regulated as a ‘new animal drug.’ This simply does not make sense since we regulate drugs, and assess their risks, in very different ways than we do for new food products.” 

Vice President of Marketing and Sales for AquaBounty, Henry Clifford, wants a word in edgewise here. “Anyone who attempts to claim that the FDA’s regulations are ‘antiquated’ is intentionally misleading you. The FDA’s guidance document (187) for Regulation of GM Animals was published in 2009.” Clifford further explains that the salmon is being reviewed as a new animal drug because it “affects the structure or function” of man or animal, which is the FDA’s definition of a “drug.” “There were much less stringent, alternate regulatory pathways we could have chosen, but we did not. In a nutshell, the science behind our fish is bullet proof, and has been exhaustively studied by world-class experts within the FDA,” hammers Clifford. 

Obviously, something’s fishy about this blatant discrepancy. But it doesn’t really matter who or what you believe. There are many claims swimming around the internet ad infinitum. At the end of the day, the FDA has the final say.

Jalil Isis, FDA Press Officer for genetically engineered animals, dishes on the current status of the GE AquAdvantage Salmon. “The FDA’s preliminary conclusions from a draft environmental assessment, which evaluates whether a potential approval would have an impact on the environment, find no significant impact,” he said. 

The FDA is taking into account the public’s opinions, however. The period for those interested in commenting on the findings closes April 26, 2013, and the FDA will then decide on whether to prepare a final environmental assessment or an environmental impact statement. The FDA will complete the review of the AquAdvantage salmon application and reach a decision on approval. But Isis declares it impossible to predict an exact timeline for when these decisions will be made.

Should the FDA give AquAdvantage the green light, 35 other species of genetically engineered fish are already in the works, including trout, tilapia, and striped bass. With an open Pandora’s Box, other animals like cows, pigs, and chickens will inevitably be sent to laboratories to be tinkered with. 

Reach Reporter Madeline Morris here. Follow her on Twitter here.



 

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