June 22, 2011

How tasty is ‘Frankenfish’? Will we ever know?

Frankenfish (top)  has a 30% growth rate faster than wild salmon (bottom). Source: Canadian Geographic

The first genetically modified animal will not be on market in the United States, for now anyway!

The ‘big’ fish, created by Aquabounty scientists, is genetically modified to be twice as large and grow twice as fast as regular Atlantic salmon. The cultivation of these fish would apparently not impose any threat to wild stocks (as they are sterile) or their habitats, nor are they deemed to be unsafe for humans to eat. Until now, a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval has been pending for selling the fish on the U.S. market.

Recently, the U.S. House of Congress voted to prohibit further spending on researching the safety of consumption of the genetically modified fish.

Congress passed an amendment to a farm spending bill to prohibit the FDA from spending any more money to approve AquaBounty’s application for its GM salmon. This essentially blocks the additional studies needed to determine the safety of the product. [Read full article].

Frankenfish has not been approved as food by Health Canada. [Read more].

Posted by websitedev
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