le 30 juillet, 2010
Mises à jour / Ressources / Topics / GE Fish
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GE Fish
The company Aquabounty has genetically engineered Atlantic salmon to grow up to 4 times faster than normal and has submitted the fish for regulatory approval in the United States but not yet in Canada. The fish could be approved anytime but the company says they should get approval in the US in 2009.
Canadian regulators are not prepared to evaluate GE fish properly. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has abandoned its own work to develop policy on GE fish (see the Auditor General's report).
Aqua Bounty conducts commercial trials of the Company’s AquAdvantage fast growing salmon in Panama.
The development of transgenic salmon with increased freeze resistance and accelerated growth rates was patented by two University professors, Dr. Garth Fletcher from Memorial University of Newfoundland and Dr. Choy Hew of the University of Toronto, as their “invention”.
The technology involves inserting two genes: The first gene, which produces growth hormones, is taken from the Atlantic salmon's cousin, the Chinook salmon. The second gene, from the ocean pout -- a more distant fish-relative -- is a "promoter" that activates the first gene. The pout promoter disrupts the salmon's normal cycle and, rather than just producing growth hormones only during the summer months, it is engineered to now produce growth hormones all year.
This fish is designed for the aquaculture industry and escape by GE fish into the wild is one major concern. The Royal Society of Canada's Expert Panel on the Future of Food Biotechnology was very clear that the risks of GE fish escape required regulations against ocean pens.
Industry argues that the GE fish will be at a disadvantage in the wild but Purdue University biologists argue that transgenic fish, despite their ecological disabilities, would not only be able to compete with wild fish but could drive them to extinction. They call this the Trojan gene effect. "Possible ecological risks of transgenic organism release when transgenes affect mating success: Sexual selection and the Trojan gene hypothesis," by W.M. Muir and R.D. Howard. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 96:13853 13856, 1999.
On March 27, 2001 Greenpeace activists sealed off the A/F Protein research facility containing genetically engineered salmon in Prince Edward Island. Click here for information on this action.
