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.
Because the AquAdvantage Salmon is affected by a "transformation event" and the injected DNA "imparts traits" to the animal, the salmon's application is actually being treated as a "new animal drug approval," hence a vet committee.
Some say the public health orientation of the new top two at FDA, Commissioner Margaret Hamburg and Deputy Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein (who spoke Monday and Tuesday) will spell a harsher climate for genetically engineered foods. The public is also becoming less GE friendly and rejected BGH in milk in 2006, 13 years after it received FDA approval.
But FDA staffers who spoke at the hearings read right out of Aqua Bounty Technologies' playbook, creating distinctions between "risk," "hazard" and "harm" -- ice is only a risk if you slip on it they pointed out -- that made the fish appear safer. http://bit.ly/bEJZlr
FDA staffers also said the AquAdvantage Salmon had minimal impact on the "human environment" until the advisory committee asked as opposed to what other kind of environment whereupon the term was dropped.
FDA's Eric Silberhorn itemized ABT's redundant safety systems to prevent the escape of GE salmon -- screens, floor drains, chemical containment, chlorine, nets -- as written in the sponsor's Environmental Assessment, prepared for the FDA, bringing to mind BP.
Why does the government present industry data on behalf of industry, some in the audience asked, and why is industry called the "sponsor" instead of "applicant"?
AquAdvantage Salmon were also said to be less "fit" if they escape though no one quoted the part of ABT's Environmental Assessment report that says the salmon eat five times as much as wild salmon and have less fear of predators. (see: Jurassic Park)
The risk of bootleg AquAdvantage Salmon surfacing in unregulated Asian operations, even returning as imports like a "transgenic shrimp" Silberhorn says is reported in US food, would be handled with the labeling, control and inspection given any US drug, said staffers. Of course other nations, like Canada and Panama are "sovereign" and not bound by our laws, added FDA's Larisa Rudenko.
Frankenfish Fears
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