Salmon farmers shun GM fish
It was many years ago when the members of the Association, which represented salmon farmers in Norway, Scotland, Ireland, Iceland, Canada (East & West Coasts), the US and Australia, took a unanimous stand against the use of genetically modified fish in their farms. The position came as a result of work being conducted on both coasts of North America. On the East Coast, a company was developing a transgenic Atlantic salmon for use in future fish farms that would grow faster than conventionally raised salmon. On Canada’s West Coast, Dr. Bob Devlin with the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans was experimenting with transgenic coho salmon, but for a totally different purpose. His research was based on the need for governments to reach a better understanding of the biology of such genetically modified fish in case an application for farming of GM fish in Canada came its way.
In a recent interview with the Telegraph Journal, the current president of the International Salmon Farmers Association (ISFA) Nell Halse told reporter Rebecca Penty that her industry outright rejects the product. “The aquaculture industry and salmon farming industry world wide has a very clear policy that we do not support the commercial production of genetically modified salmon”, Ms. Halse told the reporter.
The one and only company that seems to be pushing for the approval of farming GM salmon is the Boston, Massachusetts based AquaBounty Technologies which claims to have found a way for Atlantic salmon to grow faster by inserting a growth hormone gene from a pacific Chinook salmon. It claims to have studied their technology for some 20 years. The company is also pushing for the industry to not only use their GM salmon, but to switch from using conventional ocean- based net pen technology to a system of land-based tanks, where the genetically modified fish would have less chance to escape and mingle with regular wild salmon. AquaBounty also claims that their method of sterilizing the Atlantic salmon will ensure that 100% of their production fish can not reproduce even if they managed to escape.
But some fish breeders, including Dr. Devlin, argue that by using conventional and non-transgenic breeding technologies they can extract the growth potential of some salmonid fishes in a similar fashion. Nell Halse, who in her day job works for Cooke Aquaculture, a salmon farming company based in New Brunswick on Canada’s East Coast, said that her company has its own breeding program “..thathas enabled the company to select fish based on their attributes to improve growth rates without any growth hormones to the point where the company’s fish mature faster than in the wild”.
The US Food and Drug Administration is currently deciding if AquaBounty should be given the approval to start production of their GM salmon.
