See other Health Articles
Title: More Good News!: Clarified: What does "genetically modified" salmon mean?
Source:
CNN
URL Source: http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2010/09/20 ... ically-modified-salmon/?hpt=C1
Published: Sep 20, 2010
Author: staff
Post Date: 2010-09-20 20:54:45 by buckeroo
Keywords: None
Views: 183
Comments: 12
Photo: AquAdvantage® Salmon in the background; a non-GMO Atlantic salmon of the same age in the foreground. The United States' Food and Drug Administration is in the midst of public hearings to determine if it will approve AquaBounty Technologies' application for fish spawned from genetically engineered salmon eggs to be allowed for use as food. These "AquAdvantage® Salmon" grow into full-sized fish in half the time that it would take a regular salmon, and if approved, would become the first "transgenic" or genetically engineered animals to be approved for human consumption. It's a deeply fraught issue for both fans and foes of the technology, but stripping politics and propriety aside, here's what "genetically modified" actually means in the context of fish farming. Genetic engineering entails introducing desirable traits of one living being into another, using recombinant DNA , or rDNA technology. DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is made up of two strands of nucleotides, twisted around each other in a double helix at the nucleus of a cell. The order of the nucleotides determines hereditary characteristics. More succinctly, it's genes. Before now, genetic engineering has been used widely in agriculture to make crops resistant to pests and herbicides, in the development of microbes to produce pharmaceuticals for human and animal use, and in food to produce microorganisms used in baking, brewing and cheesemaking. While various organizations have been working to develop genetically modified animals, such as the University of Guelph's "Enviropig" - which more easily digests plant phosphorous, thus excreting less of it into the environment - AquAdvantage® Salmon would be the first to be approved by the FDA for use as food. The fish's rapid growth will be boosted by the injection of a combination of a growth gene (GH-coding sequences) from the Pacific Chinook salmon and genetic material (the AFP gene) from the ocean pout - a large, eel-like fish - into the fertilized eggs of Atlantic salmon, making the recombined DNA present in cells throughout the body of the fish. The Chinook gene promotes the growth to market size, and the pout gene allows the fish to grow in the winter as well as the summer. AquaBounty Technologies claims the resultant fish are reproductively sterile due to another genetic alteration - triploidy - that eliminates the possibility of interbreeding amongst themselves or with other native breeds, while maintaining protection over intellectual property. The company will only sell female eggs and raise the fish within contained, inland systems. However, despite these assurances, the FDA indicates that up to 5% of the eggs may indeed be fertile, and the company's claims in this regard are "potentially misleading." This analysis is entirely new ground for the FDA, and their Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee is employing the regulations they would to evaluate veterinary pharmaceuticals, rather those used for than food safety. According to Section 5 of the group's overview of this engineered Atlantic salmon, "That rDNA construct meets the definition of a 'drug' under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act" as "an article intended to alter the structure or function of the body of man or animal." Previously - What does "sustainable seafood" mean?
Poster Comment: With SEVEN BILLION people on the planet and climbing, we have to frankenstein our food base in order to achieve a full belly. For those that think, companies just perform R&D for fun.... they want a profit for their R&D.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 2.
#1. To: buckeroo (#0)
I read other articles that cited a Purdue University study that concluded that if some of these fish did escape their pens, then they could easily wipe out the wild salmon population of the whole earth. Because if they breed with other fish it means death of the species. Even the latest statements by the company that wants to grow these salmon say that 5% of the fish will be able to reproduce. your article doesn't mention these things.
1) It isn't my article. 2) It is goodnews to feed the starving masses. 3) Those that think there isn't a food plight are fooling themselves.
#3. To: buckeroo (#2)
there are about 35,000 people who starve to death every day. However, they can't afford to buy something expensive like salmon. It won't help them. They eat inexpensive foods like rice, beans, wheat, corn. If you wanted to help them, then try to stop the US government from paying people to destroy these types of foods through ethanol production. A very large portion of all such grains grown in the US today are transformed into ethanol via heavy government subsidies. Otherwise it would not be done as it is not economical. This no doubt causes thousands of people to die every day. Yet it is a non-issue in America.
BOVINE EXCREMENT. The starving can't even afford a can of tuna, let alone Frankenfish.
Those who have swallowed the apocalyptic propaganda are misinformed and deluded. India is the most densely populated country on the planet. India is a NET food EXPORTER. We do not have a "food problem". We have a political problem. Wherever there are famines and shortages of food it is not because we are unable to produce enough food to feed everybody on the planet it is because of political instability. For example Zimbabwe/Rhodesia: Prior to the rise to power of Robert Mugabe Zimbabwe was one of the largest food exporters in Africa. Zimbabwe now imports food. Without spending a lot of time going through how existing farmers were dispossessed and the farms turned over to people who had no knowledge or desire to be competent farmers the reality is that Zimbabwe has the resources to produce more food than they consume and did so at one time. They can no longer do so and it is solely and only a result of a corrupt government and for no other reason. We have no shortage of food. We have a shortage of sound and honest government.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#2. To: Red Jones (#1)
(Edited)
your article doesn't mention these things.
Replies to Comment # 2.
#8. To: buckeroo (#2)
2) It is goodnews to feed the starving masses.
#10. To: buckeroo, Red Jones, farmfriend, all (#2)
Those that think there isn't a food plight are fooling themselves.
End Trace Mode for Comment # 2.