FDA approves GM salmon for human consumption

The announcement came on Thursday, and the approval from the Food and Drug Administration also gave companies who will begin the sale of the salmon the option of voluntarily labelling that the product is genetically modified, or GM, but they actually will not be required to do so.

The new AquAdvantage salmon is a type of Atlantic salmon that features genes from Chinook salmon along with a gene switch from a sea animal called the ocean pout, to make it mature faster than normal salmon.

After conducting significant research on AquAdvantage salmon, produced by the manufacturer AquaBounty Technology, FDA scientists found the genetically engineered (GE) fish are just as nutritious as Atlantic salmon.

Bernadette Dunham, D.V.M., Ph.D., the director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine of the FDA, said in the press release that AquaBounty has met the regulatory requirements for approval.

The F.D.A. has issued a draft guidance on the voluntary labeling that indicates whether or not food has been derived from genetically engineered Atlantic salmon. The FDA, however, is not requiring such labeling, which is consistent with the agency’s stance on genetically-modified crops. The company declared their modified salmon fit nearly five years ago.

The NY Times adds that the approval of the AquaAdvantage Salmon has been opposed by a few consumers and environmental groups.

“Health Canada is now reviewing a submission from AquaBounty Technologies to sell AquAdvantage salmon in Canada as a food for human consumption”, said spokesman Sean Upton in an email to CBC News. The facility in Canada handles the breeding of the salmon, which will then be brought to the facility located in the mountains of Panama where it will be reared to full size.

Such precautionary measures include, among other things, a series of multiple and redundant levels of physical barriers placed in the tanks and in the plumbing that carries water out of the facilities to prevent the escape of eggs and fish.

The Center for Food Safety, a consumer advocacy group, said that they would file a lawsuit to challenge the approval.

However, the FDA noted that the AquAdvantage salmon “are reproductively sterile so that even in the highly unlikely event of an escape, they would be unable to interbreed or establish populations in the wild”.

“We’re supposed to “truth-in-label” everything else we grow, but not salmon”.