U.S. company wants to sell GM salmon in Canada
Nobody in the conventional salmon farming industry world-wide has come out in favour of using this product, but AquaBounty is continuing its efforts to get permission to market its genetically modified salmon products to consumers in North America and elsewhere. As Randy Shore of the Vancouver Sun writes, the company is now focusing its efforts on Canada, which has already given its permission for AquaBounty to produce off-spring from its GM products;
According to a shareholder update issued March 6, the company is seeking approval to sell AquAdvantage Salmon (AAS) for human consumption in Canada. The AquAdvantage Salmon would be the first genetically engineered food animal approved for sale in this country. The fish — which contains a gene from the Chinook salmon — grow twice as fast as conventional Atlantic salmon, promising significant energy and labour savings to growers.
The firm won approval last year to grow genetically modified fish eggs in this country for export to Panama, where the fish would be grown to market size in a land-based aquaculture system. The company is also seeking approval from American authorities to market the fish in the United States.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has declared that the salmon “is indistinguishable from other farmed Atlantic salmon, safe to eat, and does not pose a threat to the environment under the conditions in which it would live and be harvested.” Opponents of genetically engineered foods are concerned that the approval process in Canada takes place in secret, and that evidence used to evaluate the safety of the product is not disclosed for public scrutiny.
Environment Canada has already concluded that AquAdvantage Salmon is not harmful to the environment or human health when produced in contained facilities, according to the company’s documents. The firm is allowed to grow AAS eggs and fish in contained facilities in Canada, although B.C.-based Living Oceans Society and Halifax-based Ecology Action Centre have recently launched legal action in an attempt to reverse that decision. “Here we have a genetically modified salmon and we don’t know what kind of containment they are proposing,” said Lucy Sharratt, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network. “If there is a question about environmental safety, why don’t we have those details?”
The food safety approval process is similarly opaque. “We can get clues about the kinds of evidence that Health Canada will review by watching the U.S. process, but Health Canada won’t even confirm or deny that they are considering an application,” she said. AquaBounty plans to sell its product in the United States, Canada, Argentina, Chile and China, when regulatory approvals are obtained. Several U.S. grocery chains including Safeway, Kroger and Whole Foods have already said they will not sell genetically engineered salmon.
AquaBounty declined to be interviewed about any regulatory application. Health Canada is not legally permitted to release information that companies submit through the application process.
