US restaurants could soon serve GMO salmon

• GMO salmon could soon be served in US restaurants, according to biotech company AquaBounty.
• The AquAdvantage salmon are raised in a bio-secure land-based farm.
• They are given feed that speeds up their readiness to be marketed from three years to 18 months.

Your local restaurant could soon be serving genetically engineered (GE) or GMO salmon.

According to Biotech company AquaBounty, its first harvest of AquAdvantage salmon had already sold out. About five metric tons are expected at the end of May.

AquaBounty president and CEO Sylvia Wulf said, “What we want to be able to do is produce more of a healthy protein at an affordable price.”

The AquAdvantage salmon are raised in a bio-secure land-based farm. A hormone growth gene from Pacific Chinook salmon is integrated into the genome of Atlantic salmon.

As the salmon feed from a younger age, they become market-ready in just 18 months compared to the normal three years. This leads to about 70 percent more fresh salmon produced annually, said AquaBounty.

Wulf explained, “They’re very efficient in the way that they consume their feed. If you think about environmental sustainability, creating more of a healthy protein with less resources is really a benefit.”

Several critics, however, expressed their concerns.

A food justice organizer with Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance said that the GMO salmon could escape and harm native fish species, which “might cause even more harm than overfishing.”

They added that if GMO salmon end up breeding with wild fish, “then AquaBounty can start making claims that these are our patented fish because they have our patented genes inside of them.”

But Wulf pointed out that the salmon farm has not had an escape in 20 years. She added that AquAdvantage salmon are all sterile females that couldn’t breed with native salmon species, so there would be no reason to claim wild salmon as theirs.

AquaBounty has started the process of filing for FDA approval way back in 1995, but it was only in 2015 when the FDA ruled AquAdvantage fish was safe to eat. Still, regulatory complications postponed any sales.

The AquAdvantage salmon will be labeled as a GMO product and distributed by Philadelphia-based seafood company Samuels and Son Seafood Co. The first restaurants to receive and serve the fish will be in Pennsylvania.

Source: FOX 43