US Consumers Might Get Their First Taste of Transgenic Salmon This Year (ieee.org) 97
Wave723 shares a report from IEEE Spectrum: Only in the past five years has it become possible to raise thousands of healthy fish so far from the shoreline without contaminating millions of gallons of fresh water. A technology called recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) now allows indoor aquaculture farms to recycle up to 99 percent of the water they use. And the newest generation of these systems will help one biotech company bring its unusual fish to U.S. customers for the first time this year.
For AquaBounty Technologies [...] this technology couldn't have come at a better time. The company has for decades tried to introduce a transgenic salmon it sells under the brand name AquAdvantage to the U.S. market. In this quest, AquaBounty has lost between $100 million and $115 million (so far). In the final months of 2020, the company will harvest its first salmon raised in the United States and intended for sale there. Thanks to modifications that involved splicing genetic material into its salmon from two other species of fish, these salmon grow twice as fast and need 25 percent less food to reach the same weight as salmon raised on other fish farms. The report says Costco, Target, Trader Joe's, Walmart, Whole Foods, and roughly 80 other North American grocery store chains don't plan to carry it, but that could certainly change. "As of December, AquaBounty was unable to name any restaurants or stores where customers would be able to buy its salmon," the report adds.
For AquaBounty Technologies [...] this technology couldn't have come at a better time. The company has for decades tried to introduce a transgenic salmon it sells under the brand name AquAdvantage to the U.S. market. In this quest, AquaBounty has lost between $100 million and $115 million (so far). In the final months of 2020, the company will harvest its first salmon raised in the United States and intended for sale there. Thanks to modifications that involved splicing genetic material into its salmon from two other species of fish, these salmon grow twice as fast and need 25 percent less food to reach the same weight as salmon raised on other fish farms. The report says Costco, Target, Trader Joe's, Walmart, Whole Foods, and roughly 80 other North American grocery store chains don't plan to carry it, but that could certainly change. "As of December, AquaBounty was unable to name any restaurants or stores where customers would be able to buy its salmon," the report adds.
Where? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can see why the headline has that "might" in there, if at this point it looks like AquaBounty has no place willing to carry their product.
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I am not in favor of transgenic stuff, it seems like a path to profit but it creates unforeseen consequences such as all species being products instead being part of the ecosystem. In the future you might get some sort of GRM (Genetic Rights Management) issue when you go fishing. - That is some sort of corporate action to make you pay for the fish you caught in a lake
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species being products instead being part of the ecosystem.
These are FARMED salmon. Farmed salmon are already "products" and are not part of any ecosystem other than the inside of their feeding pen.
Everything you said applies just as much to selective breeding as it does to GMOs. Humans have been productizing animals for 10,000 years.
Re: Where? (Score:1)
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And although I do generally agree with your pint, how long will it be until one of them is released into the wild, by accident or maliciously?
Then it dies.
Farmed salmon are already selectively bred to grow quickly in the presence of abundant food.
They don't do well in the wild where food is not abundant and isn't shoveled directly in front of them.
They also have "wasteful" behavior bred out of them, such as expending energy being alert for predators. There aren't any sea lions in feeding pens.
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Of course you're making all of this up because the relevant studies haven't done, nor could they be, ethically. Nor have you discussed what happens when one of these fat turds of a fish mates with a wild fish and passes on only some of the new genetics.
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Of course you're making all of this up because the relevant studies haven't done, nor could they be, ethically. Nor have you discussed what happens when one of these fat turds of a fish mates with a wild fish and passes on only some of the new genetics.
My first search on PubMed gave Population effects of growth hormone transgenic coho salmon depend on food availability and genotype by environment interactions [pnas.org] - PNAS, 2004:
But it's not right to say that all farmed salmon are selectively bred t
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https://simpsons.fandom.com/wi... [fandom.com]
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I now want to release a sea lion in a salmon farm. For a few comical hours it'd be the world's happiest sea lion.
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These are FARMED salmon. Farmed salmon are already "products" and are not part of any ecosystem other than the inside of their feeding pen.
Life... finds a way.
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Life... finds a way.
Do you also worry that Holstein dairy cows are going to escape and replace the herds of wildebeest on the Serengeti savanna?
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Do you also worry that Holstein dairy cows are going to escape and replace the herds of wildebeest on the Serengeti savanna?
No I don't. I don't worry about the salmon either, it's a Jurassic Park joke.
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Cattle genes have already polluted the bison genome, so yeah. You really don't know enough about biology or ecology to be posting here.
the once-harmless yam (Score:2)
And since every idea we're ever brought to bear on the animal kingdom has always been the worst idea available (Murphy's mercantile maxim) and this unending sea of bad to terrible ideas hasn't killed us yet, GRAS is your uncle, QED.
Generally recognized as safe [wikipedia.org]
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I shouldn't worry - we Brits will soon have it all foisted on us in the "greatest trade deal ever". Can't wait.
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I can see why the headline has that "might" in there, if at this point it looks like AquaBounty has no place willing to carry their product.
It will eventually be sold at Walmart. And it might sell well in less developed countries that need/want more affordable access to fish protein.
I know w'all in the 1st world have the luxury to avoid transgenic and GMO foods (I for one don't care for that as much as I care about antibiotics in our food chain.)
But for most of the world, these kind of things present actual solutions to current challenges. Pest-resistant grains for starters.
Like it or not, the future of sustainable food chains will inclu
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There are many questions about safety and issues (if any) in ingesting such foods long term, though
Not as many as you'd think. The difference between a transgenic and non-transgenic organism is tiny next to that organism and another organism. If human digestive tracts were so frail that we couldn't handle such changes, we'd have been toast eons ago. That's not to say that there can't be issues on a case by case basis, but by and large, there's no reason conceptually why a transgene is inherently dangerous.
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Monsanto (seemingly) started the entire NON-GMO movement and now Bayer has the headache of trying to mitigate the damage transgenic plants. Do you think GMO animals will cause any less of a stir?
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GMO/transgenic organisms almost never are a direct threat to those that consume them. The big concern always has been and always will be the possible ecological impact of the transgenic genes being passed to related species in the wild.
And these frankenfish salmon are actually the poster children for this problem. The whole reason this company wants to "raise thousands of healthy fish so far from the shoreline" is because the threat to wild salmon is too great if they are raised in net pens directly in th
Frankenfish for real. (Score:5, Interesting)
Climate change, habitat destruction, the herring roe fishery, the salmon caviar trade and our fishery management practices in general on the West Coast are deplorable and will soon make the consumption of wild caught fish a thing of the past. Our children will curse us for what we have allowed to happen to the environment which in truth sustains us all!
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Mismanagement is horrifying, especially in Washington state where, despite a record low run where they ended up curtailing the recreational fishery substantially, they allowed gill nets in the
Cisgenic (Score:1)
I prefer my salmon to be cisgenic, thank you very much! **ducks**
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I prefer my salmon to be cisgenic, thank you very much!
Cisgenic fish are CRISPRier.
**ducks**
**ducks** with you.
I read the title as "Transgender Salmon" . . . hey, fish diversity, why not?
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I wouldn't eat this. (Score:3, Interesting)
Grows twice as fast and requires 25% less food.
That's some heavy duty metabolism manipulation. I wonder how natural lifespan is impacted, not that that is a concern. They should be developing weight loss pills (this would sell).
I'm all for drought resistant grains and generally support GMO for fruits and vegetables, but this sounds a bit too unnatural for human consumption (I would feed it to my dogs though, in dry nugget form).
Re: I wouldn't eat this. (Score:2)
Re: I wouldn't eat this. (Score:2)
You don't take over the genes of the things you eat, you're not turned into a chicken-pig-cow by eating meat. There is nothing different about the nutritional stuff in the meat because it's been modified, the primary problem is going to be cost, if it's more or as expensive than regular salmon nobody is going to carry it. It's why meat replacements don't take off.
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the primary problem is going to be cost
It grows faster on less feed, so why would the cost be a problem?
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Maybe they taste like chicken...
Meat growing is moving in two directions, one with an "updated" animal involved in some way, and the other a Petri dish. These will converge.
I think it will be the Matrix, but for meat producing. Might be a comical movie (if you have my sense of humor) until it actually happens.
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But you'd eat Salmon from fish farms that are either peppered with disgusting amounts of lice, disease, and deformity or are full of levels of drugs and anti-biotics that if they were any other form of meat like cow they wouldn't be legal for human consumption anyway right?
If you want to talk about unnatural, how about the level of PCBs and other chemicals that cause infertility that we've filled the ocean with that don't magically disappear when we fish them out the water? It's not unrealistic that it's on
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But you'd eat Salmon from fish farms that are either peppered with disgusting amounts of lice, disease, and deformity or are full of levels of drugs and anti-biotics that if they were any other form of meat like cow they wouldn't be legal for human consumption anyway right?
If you want to talk about unnatural, how about the level of PCBs and other chemicals that cause infertility that we've filled the ocean with that don't magically disappear when we fish them out the water? It's not unrealistic that it's one of the causes of this:
https://www.theguardian.com/sc... [theguardian.com]
I'd rather have fish grown in an environment free of pollutants and chemicals that has a minor genetic modification (a genetic difference that's present in other fish we eat, because that's where it came from) than I would anything from the rivers, farms, or oceans right now given what we pump into them. If you're worried about "unnatural" then your priorities about what you would eat are all fucked up.
My sister is an analytical biochemist for a firm that does assay on fish from the sources you quoted as well as other farmed animals and wild life. She is sworn to keep her mouth shut and would lose her job if she blabbed about anything that she sees in the assays. She became a vegan years ago because of what she sees almost daily in her job.
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Grows twice as fast and requires 25% less food. They should be developing weight loss pills (this would sell).
Wait, what? Twice the growth at 75% the food intake? This is a company that should stay away from overweight people, because their tech makes it easier to get big.
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Wait, what? Twice the growth at 75% the food intake?
No, of course not.
It is 25% less food PER UNIT WEIGHT of fish produced.
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Grows twice as fast and requires 25% less food.
That's some heavy duty metabolism manipulation. I wonder how natural lifespan is impacted, not that that is a concern. They should be developing weight loss pills (this would sell).
I'm all for drought resistant grains and generally support GMO for fruits and vegetables, but this sounds a bit too unnatural for human consumption (I would feed it to my dogs though, in dry nugget form).
Either there's something wrong with it, or there isn't.
If there is, that should be easy to establish scientifically - nutrient balance off? Too much fat? Toxic chemical?
If there isn't, what's the problem? An insufficient amount of "natural" woo?
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Grows twice as fast and requires 25% less food.
This is a misleading turn of phrase. Regular salmon requires 2 years to grow up, it basically spends a year in the ocean as a smallish fish before bulking up for the journey into the fresh water. This transgenic salmon starts bulking up immediately, rather than waiting a year.
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Those hybrid broilers are like the agricultural version of a top-fuel dragster; they hit "market weight" in about 12 weeks, and if you try raising one past that to full adulthood it'll basically collapse under its own bodyweight.
Grow twice as fast (Score:3)
Traditional wisdom told us, whatever growing twice as fast could mean the meat is somewhere 40% to 85% tasty.
If it is not so tasty as the Salmon yesteryear, people might turn to other protein sources.
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Well, out of those, I'd only pick "tasty". However, I'd like to add my own 2nd word and that would be "healthy".
Those are the only 2 driving forces for my dining choices.
I'll make sacrifices in other parts of my life to afford good foods that taste great and are healthy to eat.
Price really isn't the determining factor in my dining choices.
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Sadly I can't afford a Michelin starred chef to prepare all of my meals, so I try and find a reasonable compromise on price too.
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Well, cooking isn't exactly "rocket surgery"....it is quite simple to make healthy, great tasting home cooked meals at home.
And is economical too.
I like to make enough for leftovers too and that way I'm not cooking every day/night.
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Traditional wisdom told us, whatever growing twice as fast could mean the meat is somewhere 40% to 85% tasty.
If it is not so tasty as the Salmon yesteryear, people might turn to other protein sources.
That's why there's butter.
The secret sauce is about 24 hours (Score:2)
If this genetically modified fish (or its descendants) tastes a little off this morning, compared to the salmon you are used to eating, after a day or so without any other food, saliva will run down your chin as you scarf it down.
GMO farming provide the only sustainable protein for humans in a not too distant dystopian future.
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I believe you mean margarine. Derived from vegetable oil pressed from genetically modified plants that grow twice as fast.
Re: Grow twice as fast (Score:2)
It depends on what you consider tasty. The texture may be different because fat and muscle tissue are developing different but for most dishes except for a full fillet it doesn't matter.
Which means Britain will too (Score:3)
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I am Curious how it tastes (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I am Curious how it tastes (Score:4)
A lot of people seem to scoff at food that isn't necessarily designed to be quality from the start, but there's a huge niche for it. Most days I'm not looking for an incredibly high quality meal, I'm looking for a reasonable balance of cost, taste, and nutrition. Maybe once a month I'll treat myself to something really good, but the other 90-some meals I have every month are going to be stuff like this: low cost food that does the job. So to me, anything that can potentially do that job well (like this) is worth looking at.
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"high quality" is almost completely dependent on the chef. A lot of quality produce items exist because chefs can't figure out how to properly cook food. Look at the standard beef tenderloin. Softest piece of the cow right? Well also one of the least tastiest but greatly preferred because a lot of chefs can't figure out or put the effort into properly preparing another part of it.
The same comes with varying animal quality. You can't cook a Wagyu the same way as an Irish dexter. I've seen some horrible chefs
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The cheapest salmon is bad, nothing will change that, just because your dad can't cook doesn't change that. Try giving him the garbage you buy to cook.
Re:I am Curious how it tastes (Score:5, Interesting)
Id love to try it, i do like salmon but considering i live in the EU i guess i will not be able to anytime soon. If it tastes the same and is cheaper i dont see why i wouldnt prefer it, if i could. If it tastes worse or cost more i would not buy it. About what was changed in the fish, wikipedia says it has a growth hormone and promoter from a different fish. To me that doesnt sound like it could be a problem, food saftey wise. And its triploid instead of diploid so its harder for it to reproduce if it escapes. Personally, i have to say that all the GMO hate makes me really want to try and eat some GMOs (as long as there is nothing else wrong like antibiotics or pesticides which i do not want to eat ...)
If you read the article linked to in the original post [ieee.org] very carefully you will see that their triploids come from brood stock. The brood stock is genetically modified and if it does somehow get loose from the hatchery on Prince Edward Island it could very easily establish itself in the Atlantic. Out here on the West Coast we regularly have escapes from net pens and they do go up the rivers. So far numbers of failed neutered and viable male and female fish have not established any permanent residency in West coast rivers or streams. Even though the brood stock is in a lake where they could theoretically escape into the straights above Port Hardy on Vancouver Island.
Back in the day when fish were just taken and planted willy nilly out here in our rivers and lakes there were some anadromous browns that existed for a period of time in rivers like the Cowichan. So far the Norwegian run net farming of Atlantics on the West Coast has only created mild disease problems and lice troubles unlike in Chile where the practice almost wiped out the native fish.
What is much more concerning out here on the West Coast is that the native runs of Chinook, Coho, Sockeye, Steelhead, Cutthroat are rapidly heading for localized extinction events on rivers like the entire Fraser system and most of the once abundant rivers on Vancouver Island. The Skeena system is in deep trouble as well but not quite as bad as the situation on the Fraser. The ghost of the once enormous fishery on the Columbia is heavily hatchery based because of the dams and the Alaska fisheries are starting to collapse despite the lying claims that their wild fish are responsibly and sustainability caught,
To top all this off the Pacific Blob is effecting the timing of the fish runs and climate change is destroying rearing habitat just about everywhere. Check the link in my first post on this thread. The blog is done by a very knowledgeable person and is an alarm call. We are seeing habitat that once reared great numbers of fry destroyed by environmental abuse and climate change the complete collapse of the fisheries on the West Coast is at hand and is as sad as the loss of the fisheries of the Grand Banks. Fish farming in fresh water is necessary if we are to take some of the pressure off natural fisheries and this includes the possibility of fish farming in fresh water on the West Coast: but not with an Atlantic Salmon based monoculture methodology thank you! There are incredible ways in which we could very easily adapt the diadromous variant of Sockeye (the Kokanee Salmon) and farm it in fresh water instead. There are a great many lakes where it could be brood stocked and reared with water cleaning technologies. It already grows extremely fast if farm fed as does the diadromous version of Steehead O. mykiss aka "rainbow trout". But unless we wake up to the possibilities at hand and act now we will lose the native fisheries of the West Coast and soon.
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Thank you for your thoughtful comment. I live in the NW and try to buy wild salmon when eating (once a month or less). Should I be buying farm-raised salmon instead? I don't want to contribute to the over-fishing of our native species.
Sorry, give up fish. (Score:2)
Too many people, too many eat fish. Eating ANY fish is contributing to the problem probably more than voting incorrectly. Even the most responsible thing you can find will be counted in the general statistics that drive the industry as a whole - this will lessen your impact and help the more responsible niches but it also slightly contributes to the problem as well as promotes farming.... Farming has problems of it's own; one not thought about is that besides missing trace minerals (which may be beneficial
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Thank you for your thoughtful comment. I live in the NW and try to buy wild salmon when eating (once a month or less). Should I be buying farm-raised salmon instead? I don't want to contribute to the over-fishing of our native species.
Sorry I didn't do a twitter and reply immediately. The choice is yours of course IMHO. I still buy sole fillets from Costco and love them dearly, they are mostly so called "ethically sourced" fish. But like all ocean species eventually our greed will deplete the resource to the point by drag netting the bottom of the oceans for sole will: like West Coast halibut fishing recently has done, cause ocean caught sole to become far too expensive to eat unless you are very well off.
In Japan and elsewhere the cons
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Amount of chromosomes or if it haploid to triploid does not really make things more complicated to reproduce. ... and that is what they want you to believe.
Only laymen believe that
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A triploid individual from a normally-diploid species usually screws up meiosis.
If you'd like some examples, seedless watermelon (there's no seeds because meiosis doesn't work), and bananas (again, no seeds because meiosis doesn't work).
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Yes, but there are many counter examples, too.
Actually I never saw a seed less Banana ...
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Yes, but there are many counter examples, too.
Oddly enough, you provided zero.
Actually I never saw a seed less Banana ...
None have developed seeds. They have immature seeds. Just like seedless watermelon. This happens because they can't finish meiosis.
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The bananas in my garden have seeds.
And if I plant one, it makes a new tree.
No idea what your point is.
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I apologize for not being sufficiently pedantic to say "commercially-produced bananas" every time.
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Lol,
my bananas are very similar to commercially produced bananas, they are just super small.
And the Bananas I could buy in Germany or France, all have seeds, even the famous brand Chicita has seeds. No idea if hey would grow, though.
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Some examples: https://www.researchgate.net/p... [researchgate.net]
An overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I like how your examples either 1) don't apply (not a normally diploid species), or 2) back up what I said:
Triploids are characteristically sterile. The problem, like that of monoploids, lies in pairing at meiosis.
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No idea what you want to say.
The research article gives plenty of examples of plants that are triploid or pentaploid, that are
a) not steire
b) cross breed which each other variations
Why the funk would I have linked it otherwise.
But it is a nice research topic, so no worries, no time wasted on my side.
Can't wait (Score:2)
How long before they are relassed into the ocuea (Score:2)
and completely destroy natural populations with some unforeseen weakness? You know it will happen.
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That's not how evolution works. If they have an "unforeseen weakness" then they will very reliably get out-competed by their wild counterparts.
The FDA describes [fda.gov] various considerations made during this salmon's approval, including containment procedures to make escapes both extremely unlikely and unsuccessful, such as all raised fish being sterile females, and the farms being located far away from fresh water, which salmon require in order to reproduce.
Here's a tip (Score:2)
https://youtu.be/WfEqAolZFB0?t... [youtu.be]
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That's the wrong video. I can't find the one but they someone was asking if they should teach about homo sapiens in schools and people were going off about gays and that. One southern woman in particular. I get that these are the funniest stupid people answers singled out for entertainment but still.
Good thing Trans World Airlines isn't around any more - she'd really lose her shit.
Transgender Fish? (Score:2)
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What does that mean?
it means you didn't read the headline correctly...
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Smoke it and sell it on the Internet (Score:2)
When companies are hesitant to carry a product, you drive demand yourself. Knowing that they are working to provide a sustainable product, if they offered smoked salmon at a good price, I would be interested. People that are "green" should analyze what the GMO benefits are, and should be willing to use such products.
Hell to the no! (...this century) (Score:2)
I'm a strongly pro-genetics guy,
but I have absolutely zero trust in some sleazy corporation being able to wield that power safely; let alone having the morals to do so.
At best, we will get a few fake studies, and throwing everyone who doesn't let them "freedom" however they want into one "anti-GMO 'loony'" bin, that appeals to the black-eyer crowd, like normal.
Let's first grow the knowledge and competence to be able to trust this without being willfully ignorant! And *then* enjoy this amazing god-like abili
Transgenic? (Score:1)
What if the salmon identifies as flounder?
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Gross (Score:1)
Catch a trout out of a lake and compare it to a trout in a river or stream, the river/stream fish is much better. With salmon the difference is way more pronounced between wild and farmed. This is true of other species like catfish. If I want salmon or catfish I can drive an hour away and catch both out of the same river, or go to a local fish shop and get wild