Editorial: Genetically modifying animals seems fishy

Would you like your salmon blackened, broiled or genetically modified?

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will hold public meetings this week on AquAdvantage Salmon, genetically engineered Atlantic salmon. The FDA is expected to decide this month whether to approve the GE salmon for human consumption.

We prefer our sushi not contain mutant fish.

AquAdvantage Salmon is an Atlantic salmon with a growth hormone from a Pacific salmon, the Chinook salmon and genetic material from the ocean pout, an eel-like animal. The borrowed genetic material from these other species cuts the 30-month growth period of the salmon in half, reports CNN.

The altered-fish developers say that it is as safe to consume as farmed Atlantic salmon.

But the safety of farmed fish consumption is still disputed.

The only beneficiary of modified salmon would be the salmon industry, which stands to make larger and faster profits from a faster growing fish species, according to CNN.

Since we don’t work in the salmon industry, we can’t really see any good in having these freak fish on our dinner plates.

But we can see what possible consequences the approval of GE salmon could have.

First, it’s unclear whether there could be health consequences from eating the GE salmon. The salmon contains a growth hormone, and is likely to be treated with antibiotics like other farmed Atlantic salmon.

“It’s impossible to talk about the risks other than saying that they haven’t been properly assessed, other than [the] process has been rushed and we don’t know,” Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food and Water Watch, told CNN. “[The FDA] can’t ensure the safety of the foods they currently regulate.”

If the FDA gives GE salmon its approval, it will be the first genetically modified animal permitted by the agency, reports CNN.

This will likely set a precedent for other genetically modified animals. If this becomes a trend, what’s to say we won’t also see cows with rhinoceros growth hormones and chickens somehow merged with pterodactyl DNA?

GE salmon will also have environmental consequences, in addition to the consequences of farming fish in general.

According to CNN, “it has been proven that escapes from fish farms into the natural population are inevitable.” So when the “franken-fish” escape, they will likely threaten the already severely endangered wild salmon population.

When new species force their way into an area, they upset the balance of the current ecosystem. This is why Asian carp moving into the Great Lakes is huge a problem;  they disrupt the food chain that supports the lake’s current inhabitants. Imagine the upset with genetically modified X-Men-like fish.

With current trends towards eating local and organic products, GE foods seem like the opposite of what people want.

Let’s not take a food known for its health benefits and turn it into some sort of distorted super-fish science project.