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Meet the Frankenfish. Coming to a plate near you.
Meet the Frankenfish, the genetically modified salmon that will soon hit your dinner plate. The AquaAdvantage Salmon (AAS) has been introduced with growth hormone genes from the Chinook salmon and from an eel like fish known as the ocean pout. The reason for this is to increase the time it takes to grow to maturity. By altering the genetic code of this living creature, it is now designed to grow to market size in half of the time as a salmon that wasn’t altered in a lab. This in turn grants producing more fish for sales and profit in a smaller window of time.
Is it safe for human consumption? The FDA says sure. Just before Christmas they had concluded in their investigation that the genetically enhanced (GE) salmon is “as safe as food from conventional Atlantic salmon”. And since a major election was the focus of most groups, why would anyone want to concern their interests on a measly fish?
I am for starters. Altering the genetic code of something designed to have a normal life cycle is inhumane and morally disturbing. Most of all there are no regulations in place to label the Frankenfish to include ingredients. So we have another pat on the back given okay from the organization designed to manage what the American public ingests.
The labeling is just one of a few concerns we are facing. In the situation a Frankenfish makes it into the wild, there is a chance of crossbreeding with another fish creating who knows what. They haven’t a clue how this hybrid fishes hay-wired DNA will react with the human body. Since the current methods of DNA altering are less than 95% accurate, the GE fish is coded to be infertile. But that leaves five fish out of every hundred to still be fertile. 5% isn’t that alarming of a number if we’re only dealing with a hundred. But that won’t be the case.
Fish farms are heavily crowded, which builds dependence on antibiotics to keep the fish “healthy”. Fish are forced into grimy enclosures where diseases and parasitic infections are a common danger. A process called “grading” is where a machine sorts the fish by their size. By passing through a series of grates, the fish are bounced and bumped in the procedure causing painful scrapes, sores and damage to their scales.
Driven by profit, these fish are forced to reside in bathtub sized pens housing up to twenty seven full grown fish. This causes stress related injuries and deformities which are something the farms are familiar with. As many as 40% of the fish are blind which is overlooked since it doesn’t affect profit. And to top it all, these fish actually go insane for the lack of use of their natural instincts to roam large bodies of water.
Overall, Frankenfish are on their way to our grocery stores. The monster has been created and there’s no stopping it. Even if (doubtfully) the U.S would ban these creatures, another country will pick up the biotechnology. So regardless of our efforts, we’ll somehow be affected by this.
And my greatest concern is, like all other FDA approved products, what am I consuming? Beef, chickens, dairy and now fish are all products of a laboratory. Spending their lives cramped and confined while being loaded with various hormones and antibiotics, these animals can’t be completely safe to consume. If these injections assist in forcing the animals to grow bigger than average, could that be why obesity is so common these days?
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22 Responses to Meet the Frankenfish. Coming to a plate near you.
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KarenJ
Jan. 28th, 2013 at 9:42 pm
What is the food industry going to call these fish, once they hit the grocery stores and restaurants?
I want to know, so I can avoid eating them.
Right now, the only salmon I eat is labelled “wild Alaska salmon”. I surely do hope that’s what it really is.
Mark Bousquet
Jan. 30th, 2013 at 2:47 pm
There will be no labeling difference. The package will say “Salmon” on it. Nothing else.
DavidR
Jan. 30th, 2013 at 3:02 pm
Best to avoid the Alaskan wild salmon right now as well. Radioactive contamination from Fukushima had begun to manifest in those and other fish caught throughout the northern Pacific. Only “good” wild salmon left on earth are those caught in the Atlantic.
Shiva(Moderator)
Jan. 28th, 2013 at 9:51 pm
We have to find a way to stop this. We need money to bribe our own reps more then Monsanto and the Fish industry does.
The implications of this can be very disturbing. The testing of these creature in my opinion isnt close to telling us what the long term effects are on us and the animals.
The fish industry is horrifying. Especially in China where fish are grown practically in sewage water. The filth is incredible. Our own fisherys must not think much of us to sell this crap
Mr. Anon
Jan. 28th, 2013 at 11:09 pm
That’s a general problem with fishing farms, not one specific to transgenics.
MarkD
Jan. 29th, 2013 at 9:09 am
These aren’t fake fish. They’re living breathing animals that we’ve made grow faster. There is not “plenty of fish in the sea”. We are consuming faster than they are growing. This is nature. Believe it. We tinkered with their genetic code and now they grow to maturity fast enough. I am not afraid of this boogie man so much as I am afraid of Monsanto killing bees and patenting seeds. Those are the things to worry about. This is just progress.
Sandra
Jan. 29th, 2013 at 10:00 pm
It’s all about the $$$. Thankfully I hate salmon but I’m sure they won’t stop there if people buy it. The public must be informed. I refuse to eat anything from Asian countries. I live in PEI, Canada and will only purchase seafood from the Atlantic Provinces.
Mark Bousquet
Jan. 30th, 2013 at 2:48 pm
Monsanto has been given power over our FDA. There is nothing we little people can say or do anymore.
Shiva(Moderator)
Jan. 30th, 2013 at 2:53 pm
Monsanto has been given the right to sue farmers whose crops are fertilized by a Monsanto crop. In other words if you live across the road from someone who is growing Monsanto seeds, and those seeds fertilize your crops, you have to pay for a license to grow that crop. And they are actually getting away with it. I think it’s something called we have judges who take money. I think the word is bribery
Marwill
Jan. 28th, 2013 at 10:44 pm
I read in horror what is happening to the animals that supply food to Americans and can only wonder what the repercussions will be. World wide, cancers seem to be at epidemic numbers, previously unknown diseases are rife, people are becoming obese with all the side effects that are associated with obesity and does the food industry care? It seems that Monsanto and their like have a free rein to do whatever they like in modifying food, and are only driven by profit levels, at any cost.
Is it safe to eat anything, that is not home grown?
Phoenix Redux
Jan. 28th, 2013 at 10:50 pm
While I am not eager to ingest genetically modified fish until I understand the implications of such modification, at the same tme I have to question some of the assumptions of this very poorly written article.
To begin with, the writer states, “Since the current methods of DNA altering are less than 95% accurate, the GE fish is coded to be infertile. But that leaves five fish out of every hundred to still be fertile. 5% isn’t that alarming of a number if we’re only dealing with a hundred. But that won’t be the case.”
A statistic of 95% accuracy doesn’t necessarily mean that the same stat applies equally to all coding. Perhaps 100% of the fish are sterile, but 10% do not mature as quickly as they are coded to mature. This is sloppy and unscientific writing, designed to induce fear, but not really explaining the perceived threat.
I also wonder how one defines “insanity” in salmon, or assesses pain in fish.
Let’s examine the implications of genetiic miodifications without the hysteria of half-truths and anthropomorphizing of animals.
It doesn’t help the argument to be so disingenuous.
Mr. Anon
Jan. 28th, 2013 at 11:11 pm
There is definitely a lot of irrational fear over biotechnology. Sickeningly, it reminds me of the right wing’s opposition to climate science and evolution. We cannot call ourselves the party of science if we discard an entire field of study based on irrational assumptions.
Mr. Anon
Jan. 28th, 2013 at 11:05 pm
I’m sorry, but I’m siding with the science on this issue. I think it is wrong to discard and censor science based on irrational fear of biotechnology.
Dar Winn
Jan. 28th, 2013 at 11:10 pm
no to be a muckracker here, but we’ve been eating modified foods of all sorts for ever. even before monsanto screwed the whole corn genetic pool, corn has been hybrid and modified to be edible since the natives. beets, sugar cane, wheat,bran, broccoli, even rice, have been man changed to be more edible. many more examples of this…
that being said, i will reserve judgement on these fish, as we are fishing the hell out of the sea, and farm fish will be a serious need. hell, the whole food supply in the world is messed up now anyway. many fish you think you are getting from the sea, aint the type of fish you though it is…
Reynardine
Jan. 28th, 2013 at 11:46 pm
In fact, the tiger muskellunge has been out there for generations. It is a fully sterile hybrid of (purportedly) the muskellunge and the northern pike. As far as I know, it has not displaced either sterile species, and there is no genetic introgression.
Reynardine
Jan. 29th, 2013 at 12:41 am
Evidently, I was wrong. Some female tiger muskies have proven fertile, and their offspring with either parent species have also been fertile. This introgression has apparently gone on naturally for some time where the ranges of the northern pike and muskellunge overlap, and the stocking of tiger muskies has spread it around.
The Atlantic salmon and the chinook are related, but of different genera. I’d hazard that genetic interchange between them ceased to occur in nature when the Cretaceous Waterway closed. All the same, it’s not like putting cricket genes into dairy cattle.
Reynardine
Jan. 29th, 2013 at 1:15 am
Also, the rainbow trout, previously called Salmo gairdnari and thus counted in the Atlantic salmon group, has been changed to the genus of the Pacific salmon. Something’s fishy…
Reynardine
Jan. 29th, 2013 at 7:09 am
Differentiation seems to have occurred as recently as the Miocene, and there still appears to be some natural cross-fertility between the genera (or else the genus reclassification of Salmo gairdneri was incorrect.) In fact, our streams have been stocked with commercially-produced hybrid fish since mid-20th Century.
SinghX
Jan. 29th, 2013 at 6:49 am
All this is starting to sound more and more like the book, “Year of the Flood”, by Margaret Atwood. If you haven’t read it, find it. It’s a really fun yet, scary take on our “apocalyptic” future. Most of her premise revolves around “follow the food”, how society divides itself into two groups of consumers; those who ingest all kinds of genetically splice food forms and those who have formed a “religion” called “The Gardeners”.
Spoiler alert: Al Gore, Ewell Gibbons and a whole host of 20th century “earth-savers” are elevated to sainthood by The Gardeners.
Smiley
Jan. 29th, 2013 at 3:59 pm
What if they all get loose and released into the wild?
Reynardine
Jan. 29th, 2013 at 10:47 pm
In all likelihood, only one sex can be fertile (as is the case with tiger muskies), so if any of these salmon were fertile, they could only breed with one of the parent species, or one closely related. The offspring of that cross might be sterile or subfertile, in which case the strain would peter out in a couple of generations. If one sex were fertile and backcrossed to the parent strain, it would soon take genetic analysis to tell the introgressed descendants from the wild ancestor. Only if most members of both sexes were significantly fertile would you get a new strain, and adaptive pressures would determine the rest. Sometimes, the hybrids have proven specially adaptive to ruderal environments (the ones we make by junking stuff up).
inez
Jan. 29th, 2013 at 10:00 pm
Growth hormones in our food supply has effected young girls who now experience menstruation as young as 9. Which means they can get pregnant. WOW! Does it grow penises as well? How about getting taller in puberty. Growth Hormone………..HHHMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!