I knew something stunk.
"If the modified salmon is approved, consumers would not even know they were eating a genetically engineered product"
I think I'll skip the meal. Hope they didn't get the catch from the Danube.
WASHINGTON — Federal food regulators opened hearings yesterday to consider whether to approve, for the first time, a genetically engineered animal for the dinner tables of Americans.
The Food and Drug Administration is holding two days of hearings on a request to market genetically modified salmon....
Critics, however, call the modified salmon “Frankenfish’’ that could cause allergies in humans and eventually decimate the wild salmon population. An FDA advisory committee is reviewing the science of the genetically engineered fish this week and hearing such criticisms as the agency ponders approval.
Oh, that makes me feel a whole pile better. The lying government is going to review the science.
The FDA has already said that the salmon, which grow twice as fast as conventional ones, are as safe to eat as the traditional variety.
Related: Slow Saturday Special: FDA's Gulf Coast Feast
I'd like a second opinion, thanks.
Whether the American public will have an appetite for it is another matter.
I've already lost mine.
Genetic engineering is already widely used for crops, but until now the government has not considered allowing the consumption of modified animals. Although the potential benefits — and profits — are huge, many individuals have qualms about manipulating the genetic code of other living creatures.
And what of the consequences?
"Is it only a coincidence that this malady appeared shortly after genetically altered crops (GMO) were grown extensively? Maybe bats eat insects that have eaten their final meal and the genetic alteration somehow changes the bats hibernation functions. Monsanto and Bayer haven’t done much, if any, research in this area. Incidentally, honey bees started experiencing “colony collapse disorder” at that same time.... We still don’t know what affect GMO foods will have"
Yeah, what a coincidence, huh?
Part of the two-day hearing will focus on labeling of the fish. It is possible that if the modified salmon is approved, consumers would not even know they were eating a genetically engineered product....
Approval of the salmon would open the door for a variety of other genetically engineered animals, including an environmentally friendly pig that is being developed in Canada or cattle that are resistant to mad cow disease.
Time to STOP EATING MEAT NOW, folks!!
“For future applications out there, the sky’s the limit,’’ said David Edwards of the Biotechnology Industry Association. “If you can imagine it, scientists can try to do it.’’
That's where the term mad scientists came from.
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A wide range of environmental, food safety, and consumer groups have argued that more public studies are needed and that the FDA process is inadequate because it allows the company to keep some proprietary information private. Modified foods are regulated under the same process used for animal drugs.
“It is outrageous to keep this vital information secret,’’ said Wenonah Hauter, director of the advocacy group Food & Water Watch. “Consumers have a right to know what FDA is trying to allow into our food supply.’’
It's official: this government works for corporations.
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The company has several safeguards in place to allay concerns. All the fish would be bred female and sterile, though a small percentage may be able to breed.
Welcome to Jurassic Ocean!
They would be bred in confined pools where the potential for escape would be very low.
Life will find a way.
If approved, the fish could be in grocery stores in two years, the company estimates.
I never stop at the fish case.
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Related: Boston Globe Fishing Net
The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
At the center of a controversy over whether genetically modified salmon should be sold for consumption is a tiny Waltham company that has spent 15 years and $60 million working on the project.
AquaBounty Technologies, using a growth hormone gene from the Chinook salmon, has created an Atlantic salmon that grows twice as fast as the conventional fish. It reaches full size in about 18 months, rather than the standard three years.
The company calls it AquAdvantage salmon. Concerned groups declared it “Frankenfish.’’
Earlier this month, the US Food and Drug Administration proclaimed the fish safe to eat, and public hearings took place this week. Opposition was swift and vocal. Critics say it poses risks to consumer health and the environment. They rallied in front of the White House, and a coalition has gathered more than 170,000 signatures in protest.
AquaBounty’s cofounder, Elliot Entis, tells another story, one of a product that could help address future food shortages and reduce the pressure on wild fish stocks.
Or CAUSE THEM!
It is a product that might not exist if he had not happened to read the newspaper one day....
The fish must be bad because I just got sick!
Entis led the first rounds of financing himself. Shareholders now include private equity fund Linnaeus Capital Partners; Alejandro Weinstein of the Chilean pharmaceutical company, Recalcine; and the Fairchild Corp. The company employs 24 people. Headquarters are in Waltham, and eggs are grown in Prince Edward Island and Panama....
Just the people you want looking after your health, huh?
Some take issue with the research and the evaluation process. The salmon is being treated as a drug rather than food....
Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, says: “We’re very concerned that the Food and Drug Administration is using a process for veterinary drugs. They need to develop a process that keeps up with science and actually looks at genetically engineered foods. We’re also very concerned about the science they based the food safety assessment on. In their risk assessment, they used only four studies, and three were not peer-reviewed. They were submitted by the company. The fourth was from a peer-reviewed journal, but was 18 years old.’’
I'm having stomach pains, readers.
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This week’s hearings in Rockville, Md., were designed to gather public opinion before the FDA decides whether the fast-growing salmon wins official approval. “There is no timeline on a decision,’’ says Siobhan DeLancey of the FDA Office of Public Affairs....
Translation: They will slide it through as your are doubled-over praying to the porcelain God.
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Turns out NONE of your FOOD SUPPLY is SAFE, America:
WASHINGTON — We have always played with our food.
For thousands of years, humans have practiced selective breeding — pairing the beefiest bull with the healthiest heifers to start a herd. That concept was refined to develop plant hybridization and artificial insemination. Today we have tastier corn on sturdier stalks, bigger turkeys, and meatier cattle.
Now comes an Atlantic salmon that is genetically engineered to grow twice as fast as a regular salmon.
Sorry, but selective breeding and genetic engineering are not the same.
If US regulators approve it, the fish would be the first such scientifically altered animal to reach the dinner plate.
Whatever the regulator’s decision on the salmon, it is only the start. In labs and on experimental farms are:
■ Vaccines and other pharmaceuticals grown in bananas and other plants.
■ Trademarked “Enviropigs,’’ whose manure does not pollute as much.
■ Cows that do not produce methane in their flatulence.
And in the far-off future, there might be foods built from scratch — the scratch being DNA.
Sometimes when science tinkers with food, it works. Decades ago, Norman Borlaug’s “Green Revolution’’ of scientifically precise hybrids led to bigger crop yields that have dramatically reduced hunger.
There is more hunger in the world than ever!
Sometimes it flops. Anyone remember the Flavr Savr tomato? Probably not. “There was no flavor there to save,’’ one taster quipped.
To the biotech world, precise tinkering with the genes in plants is a proven way to reduce disease, protect from insects, and increase the food supply.
Actually, the research has shown the YIELDS are LESS!
See: Why Are Indian Farmers Committing Suicide?
UCS Study Says Genetically Modified Crops Have Failure to Yield
Also see: Genetically Manipulated Crops: The GMO Catastrophe in the USA
Boston Globe spreading GMO propaganda
Yes, ONCE AGAIN the Globe is PUSHING PROPAGANDA!
To skeptics, genetic changes put the world and the food supply at risk. Modified organisms can escape into the wild or mingle with native species, changing them with unknown effects.
In the past 15 years, genetically engineered plants have been grown on more than 2 billion acres in more than 20 countries.
Some specialists say the natural food of our forebears is mostly long gone....
“All of the animals, plants, and microbes we use in our food system, our agricultural system, are genetically modified in one way or another,’’ said Bruce Chassy, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “That or they’re wild.’’
I'll take the WILD, 'kay?
So how much are they paying you, buddy?
The modifications are mostly from selective breeding and hybridization. But genetic engineers compare these methods employed for thousands of years to using a sledgehammer.
Martina Newell McGloughlin, director of the University of California's Biotechnology Research and Education Program, said, “Genetic engineering is more precise and predictable, yet it is regulated . . . There is no regulation at all on the traditional breeding system.’’
She finds fears over genetically engineered food and the regulations that accompany them hard to stomach. More than four-fifths of the soybean, corn, and cotton acreage in the United States last year used genetically engineered crops, according to a 2010 National Academies of Sciences study.
Where have all the bees gone?
The cover-ups continue.
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Related: Federal protection for sturgeon considered
Markey wants egg farms with record of violations inspected
High-risk egg farms to get first inspections
Yeah, the FDA does a great job.
