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AN intense - and passionate - debate is opening across the United States and the rest of the world over whether genetically modified salmon is safe - for both the consumers and the wild salmon industry.
The US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) recently announced a 60-day consultation and a series of public meetings this month to decide if GM fish can be eaten by human beings.
The full approval process is expected to take up to a year, but if it gets the go-ahead the salmon could be on sale publicly by 2012. Its decision will eventually impact on fish farming in the UK and Europe.
But in America the fishing industry and politicians from commercial-fishing states are mobilising against this possible FDA approval. Alaska is one of the states showing the biggest concerns.
Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, from Alaska, said bluntly: "Putting unlabelled, genetically altered salmon in the marketplace is simply irresponsible, and the FDA needs to strongly consider what impacts this will have before they approve this Frankenfish."
The GM salmon has been developed by AquaBounty Technologies and they say that it is perfectly safe for human consumption. Called AquaAdvantage Atlantic Salmon, it contains a growth-hormone gene from another salmon that helps it grow twice as fast as conventional farmed fish.
But not everyone agrees. Angela Sanfilippo, president of the Gloucester Fishermen's Wives Association of Massachusetts, said: ."This stuff is not healthy for people, and it's not like our fresh fish." Ms. Sanfilippo's group and others have joined with 39 lawmakers who wrote to the FAD this week asking the agency to stop its approval process for the genetically modified salmon.
Aqua chief executive, Ronald Stotish, said the company is disappointed by the letter: "Our elected representatives have chosen to be swayed by rhetoric while ignoring publicly available scientific review." He added: "This is the most studied fish in history." An FDA spokeswoman declined to comment, saying the agency would respond directly to the members of Congress.
In Britain, environmentalist and author of The End of the Line documentary on fish, said in a recent Sunday Times column headed 'The Frankenfish is feeding us a monstrous Folly' that the argument that GM salmon could feed the world was a monstrous folly.
He said: "If we genuinely want to feed more people in a world of scarce resources we should stop feeding farmed salmon three times its body weight in Peruvian anchovy and try eating the anchovy ourselves. Is fish farming a bad idea? Not at all. We should farm largely vegetarian fish such as tilapia, barramundi and pangasius.
One of these GM salmon will eventually escape and pollute wild salmon, is the real danger. Wild salmon could cease to exist."
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