If you enjoy the taste and healthy benefits of salmon, and appreciate that it is available to you, you may want to share your thoughts with the federal government as soon as possible.
Why? Because the Food and Drug Administration just declared that genetically modified salmon “is as safe as food from conventional Atlantic salmon,” and they are looking for your feedback.
As soon as next year, salmon could become more abundant and less expensive, meaning that salmon lovers will enjoy this heart-healthy food more easily and often.
Before that can happen, however, GM salmon must overcome the harsh opposition of radical anti-biotech groups. This should not have to be a concern. Unfortunately, it is, and failure would deliver a devastating blow not just to a safe product, but also to the very idea of improving our food security with biotechnology.
On December 21, the FDA released an extensive report on GM salmon and opened a 60-day comment period for citizens and organizations to register their opinions. Think of it as the final jumps in a long regulatory salmon run. As this phase proceeds, officials should hear an important message: Consumers know GM salmon is safe and look forward to eating it.
Developed by a Massachusetts company, GM salmon grows to market size in half the time. It achieves this feat by blending the genes of Atlantic salmon with a growth gene from a Chinook salmon and an anti-freeze gene from an ocean pout.
In every other respect, this is an ordinary salmon: It tastes the same and it’s just as healthy. Because the introduction of fishery-raised GM salmon will remove pressure from wild stock, it’s even good for the environment. We’ll have more salmon on our grills as well as in our seas and streams.
I have a special interest in wild salmon because I own a fishing lodge in Alaska. We depend on salmon to thrive in their natural habitat.
Fortunately, GM salmon pose no threat. For starters, they’re sterile and can’t mate. They’re also confined to indoor containers. One of the major test facilities was built in the mountains of Panama, on the theory that even in the unlikely event of a catastrophe; the cold-dependent GM salmon would perish in the regions warm and muddy waters. Similar safeguards would accompany any commercial production.
Because so much care has gone into their advent, GM salmon are on the verge of becoming the first genetically improved animals approved for food consumption.
It’s about time. The regulatory-approval process started long ago. The first GM salmon was created in 1989, during the first Bush administration. The FDA got involved 17 years ago, during the Clinton administration. As Jon Entine recently pointed out in a detailed investigation for Slate, the online magazine, the Obama administration was ready to issue its approval last year but dragged its feet for political rather than scientific reasons: It wanted to avoid a pre-election controversy.
The good news is that the FDA is finally letting science trump politics. As Entine points out, however, there is much more at stake than the fate of a single food product: “North America has become a dead zone” for investment in genetically enhanced animals, due to the strangling effects of political red tape.
James Murray of the University of California at Davis recently developed a goat that produces milk with a special protein that prevents diarrhea—an advance that could save lives in the developing world, especially among children. Yet as Entine reports, Murray has moved his research to Brazil. “When you don’t have a regulatory pathway forward and the government doesn’t support research in this area, what company will invest in this field?” he asked. “None.”
Traditionally, the United States has led the world in biotechnology regulatory approval. If GM salmon suffers new setbacks, however, we’ll fall further behind—at a time when China is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into transgenic animals.
During the comment period, Americans should say they believe in biotechnology and want more of it.
Since the national elections, Washington has focused almost exclusively on debt and taxes. Yet the fiscal cliff isn’t our only challenge: We’re also confronted by a kind of regulatory waterfall, in which the rushing rapids of politics smash great ideas and proven concepts.
GM salmon may survive, despite the long and unnecessary delays. The next innovation may not be so lucky.
Ted Sheely raises lettuce, cotton, tomatoes, wheat, pistachios, wine grapes and garlic on a family farm in the California San Joaquin Valley. Ted and his sons own Rainbow King Lodge on Lake Iliamna, Alaska. He volunteers as a board member of Truth About Trade & Technology (www.truthabouttrade.org)
(1) There Is something wrong, but Biotech won’t “suck up” and deal with it. The Patents currently used have been merely added onto since their deployment in the 90′s. The Science and Tech used, noting the change to a Bacteriologic carrier versus the old “Gene Gun” as the way to place the traits[but then, what does the Seed RNA make of the notably unstable RNA/DNA of the host Phage?] is 30 years old. Science AND Technology have changed, as has our understanding of Cellular Processes. Doing Genetic “Engineering” without understanding and addressing the Quantum Mechanics of it will never create a stable end product. If the sequence in current products were mapped and compared with the Patent Gene map-WHAT would we find? The idea is currently being challenged in court. (2) Labeling is done in 61+ Countries. Some people will read the labels, many more won’t-they’ll shop with their pocketbooks until something truly drastic affects them personally with the products they buy…sounds cynical, but you know it’s the truth. As American, it makes no sense to buy a mattress which the law mandates must retain a label until purchased, and not be able to see what I’m paying MY MONEY for at the Grocery Store. Sudden extra-large portions of salmon? A no-go for me and increasing numbers of disgusted consumers.(kind of a moot point, as I already KNOW who the GMO usual suspects are and don’t buy them…what Monsanto and Bayer, did you think Consumers couldn’t find a way around your efforts to “protect us from ourselves”?) (3) While certainly some of the “Research” on both sides of the GM issue are from “Suspect” to plainly bad, not ALL of it is. Noting the rise of nearly 40 species of weed mutations wherein the traits have genetically jumped species (does that REALLY happen in Nature?), mutant bacteria, worms, etc., could there reasonably be a possibility there is an actual problem? Now we’re seeing the same players, using the same methodology to manipulate living beings? Look what we got from Glyphosate in terms of plant and insect mutations. “Loose the Kraken!”
It is correct that this process began years ago when the FDA asserted jurisdiction over genetically engineered animals using the New Animal Drug Application (NADA) regulatory process. Sadly, companies have been allowed to keep important information secret under NADA, excluding the public from being involved in the decision-making process.
Scientists in other agencies have expressed alarm about the FDA push to approve GE salmon. The Fish and Wildlife Service’s geneticists in Oct. 2010 wrote to FDA about the inadequate FDA review and concluded “approval of AquaBounty Technologies’ request for commercial rearing of [GE] AquAdvantage salmon is premature.” Members of the U.S. House and Senate have urged the FDA to address serious flaws in its approval process and incorporate more public input and scientific data. They argued that GE fish would put wild fish in jeopardy and “recklessly and needlessly endanger human health” (Senate Letter to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg.)
To say that these GE fish are as safe as Atlantic salmon, we need only look at problems occurring with marine feedlots that rear Atlantic salmon. Washington is one of two states that has allowed salmon farming with open cages incapable of confining fish, pathogens or parasites. In four years, more than 613,000 nonnative Atlantic salmon escaped into Puget Sound waters. Millions of pounds of fish waste annually flush from these marine feedlots. Viral hemorrhagic septicemia infected Washington’s farmed salmon several winters ago. The virulent pathogen Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA) has been found in British Columbia salmon farms and also recently in AquaBounty’s production site in Eastern Canada. The World Organization for Animal Health lists ISA along with Anthrax, Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), Foot and mouth disease, rabies, swine fever, avian influenza, West Nile fever.
Despite scientific research of impacts of industrial aquaculture, the Department of Commerce/ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is actively promoting privately owned operations in state waters and our nation’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), three to 200 miles offshore. These heavily subsidized operations put wild fish, water quality and small fishing businesses at risk, but that may be the ultimate goal – by destroying coastal economies and ecosystems, resistance to open pit mining, diversion and damming of free flowing rivers, offshore oil drilling and other industrial activities is also eliminated.