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FDA Closer To Approving Biotech Salmon

Posted by samzenpus on from the it's-what's-for-dinner dept.

An anonymous reader writes with a story about the possibility of genetically engineered salmon showing up on your table. "A controversial genetically engineered salmon has moved a step closer to the consumer's dining table after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Friday the fish didn't appear likely to pose a threat to the environment or to humans who eat it. AquAdvantage salmon eggs would produce fish with the potential to grow to market size in half the time of conventional salmon. If it gets a final go-ahead, it would be the first food from a transgenic animal - one whose genome has been altered - to be approved by the FDA."

1 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. Re:"didn't appear likely to pose a threat" by climb_no_fear · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The patented fish are diploid and fertile. Female triploid salmon are sterile and cannot cross-breed with wildtype stocks. They are produced by heat shock and other methods (they have to be produced, as they are sterile). The female triploids are produced from the diploids for production purposes, so that if they escape, they cannot reproduce. Triploids even occur naturally but rarely (0.6%) in natural salmon populations.

    However, several questions come to my mind:
    1.What if someone, sometime, accidentally releases the diploid GMO fish? These fish grow faster than the normal salmon and therefore might have introduce a selective advantage to the introduced genes, even if the original GMO fish are reportedly less fecund.
    2. Is the triploid production method 100% effective or might you have 0.1% diploids in there, capable of reproduction?
    3. Male triploid salmon do have gonads and are are potentially (even if at a very low rate) slightly fertile. How long until a male escapes? I know that the males appear obviously different than the females (I used to fish for salmon in Canada as a youth) nevertheless, I cite Murphy's Law ...

    A bit of reading for the interested:

    A simple, clear presentation:
    http://www.salmotrip.stir.ac.uk/downloads/SSPOpresentation.pdf

    More hardcore molecular biology:
    http://www.nature.com/hdy/journal/v104/n2/full/hdy2009108a.html