Rockville, MD Even though the FDA held hearings about how AquAdvantage Salmon should be labeled the day after hearings about if it should be approved this week, it said it has not decided yet about the genetically engineered fish.
Unfortunately, its invited speakers didn't get the memo.
Presenting to the Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee (VMAC) on Monday, Yonathan Zohar, from the Center of Marine Biotechnology at the University of Maryland, extolled the "promise" of aquaculture and bashed Greenpeace and other groups who are against growing "fish in cages."
And, Alison Van Eenennaam, with the Department of Animal Science at University of California-Davis, declared during labeling hearings on Tuesday, that GE salmon "poses no additional risk," criticized the New York Times' AquAdvantage Salmon coverage and laughed at peanut allergy labels. She also served on the veterinary committee advising the FDA, the previous day.
The AquAdvantage Salmon was created by inserting the coding sequence from a chinook salmon growth hormone gene, under control of an ocean pout gene, into wild Atlantic salmon. The resulting fish grows twice as fast as wild Atlantic salmon, reaching its full size in 18 months instead of three years.
Though the fish, all female, are 95 to 99 percent sterile, Boston-based Aqua Bounty Technologies' (ABT), its developer, says eggs will be grown on Prince Edward Island in Canada and adults in Panama because the respective marine environments discourage survival of escapees.
The FDA has approved GE crops, genetically modified bovine growth hormone (BGH) used in milk and, last year, a goat with human genes to create a blood clotting drug. But the AquAdvantage Salmon is the first GE animal whose flesh will actually be eaten.
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