With public hearings on AquaBounty Technologies’ quick-growing genetically modified salmon scheduled for September 19th, the FDA concluded Friday the fish is safe for the environment and consumers. The GM salmon, which have been heavily studied for over 10 years, are implanted with a gene from another fish species that causes growth hormone to be secreted year round, resulting in faster growth. Although the GM salmon are only sterile females that would remain inland, opponents argue that some will be able to escape into the Atlantic Ocean and breed, ultimately harming the native salmon population by depleting resources.
Activists also oppose the salmon on the grounds that studies have not done enough to determine whether the insertion of the growth hormone gene will lead to allergies, but ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross says that no one has been able to find any adverse health effects from biotech agricultural products in the 15-plus years they have been on the market. “Anyone can have an allergic reaction from food,” he says. “However, there’s no reason why insertion of this gene to promote growth will cause more allergies than any other food.”
“These activists are against the salmon because it’s genetically modified and industrial, not because of safety,” concludes ACSH’s Jeff Stier. “When it comes to labelling GM foods, if they are safe, there’s no need to label them, and if they aren’t safe, then they should not be on the market in the first place.”
