Genetically Engineered Salmon: Coming to a Plate Near You?

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by Paula Crossfield

The genetically modified salmon called AquAdvantage was discussed on Monday in front of the Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee, which will help the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decide whether or not to approve the fish for commercial production. The meeting comes after an unusually short 14-day period of public comment on the “new animal drug.”

That’s right: the first potentially approved genetically engineered animal is being considered just like a pharmaceutical, instead of as a precedent with significant implications for the environment, other species, and human health, which would usually require a 60-90-day comment period to enable the public to go over the 255-pages of recently released technical information from the FDA.

Unlike clones, which are copies of an animal and which the FDA has already ruled safe to eat (and are also being sold without a label), genetically modified animals are those which have had their genetic code altered. The AquAdvantage salmon, for example, mixes a gene for producing a growth hormone from the Chinook salmon and a gene that encourages over-production of that hormone from an eel-like fish called the ocean pout.