AquaBounty Claims Its Frankenfish Are Sterile, So Why Is USDA Funding Their Study to Make Sterile GMO Fish?

AquaBounty, the company that is trying to gain approval to sell its genetically engineered salmon claims that one of the reasons they’re not a risk is that they’re sterile. So, why is the USDA giving them nearly half a million dollars to study how to make GMO fish sterile?

In response to fears that they might escape into the wild and breed with natural salmon, AquaBounty promises that their frankenfish will never get near the ocean. Yet, most of their salmon are raised in open-net pens in the ocean! Their website claims:

AquaBounty has further stipulated that it will market only sterile, all female AquAdvantage® Salmon. Since these fish are unable to reproduce, there can be no gene flow to wild salmon. As a further precaution, AquAdvantage® Salmon will be reared in physically contained facilities, similar to those used in the commercial trout industry. AquAdvantage® Salmon will thus be raised with redundant biological and physical containment, mitigating any potential risk of a negative impact on genetic diversity of wild stocks.

So why does Aquabounty need a gift of $494,162 to figure out how to render GMO fish sterile, when they claimed that they can do it already?

Ronald L. Stotish, the president and CEO of AquaBounty, is unhappy with delays in the FDA’s approval of their frankenfish. His company is in financial trouble, having lost $2.8 million in the last half year, a time when they had expected to be selling their product. Public outcry, though, caused the FDA to back off their rush to approve. He’s lashed out, saying that some organizations have “misled the public” and ”intimidated regulators with threats of lawsuits”. He believes, though, that congress will adhere to “their commitment to science-based regulation” and see to it that AquAdvantage salmon will be approved.

Apparently, Stotish’s idea of science-based regulation has more to do with  the wishful thinking that turns a claim of sterile fish into a fact of sterile fish. And the USDA’s take on science is to hand over nearly half a million of taxpayers’ dollars to a company that claimed it already has sterile fish, so that it can try to make that claim happen.

Food & Water Watch has investigated AquaBounty’s GMO salmon, finding them wanting for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is a concern about the potential of crossbreeding with wild salmon. Other concerns include:

• Because they’d be raised in closed environments, genetically modified salmon would probably have the same nutritional deficiencies already found in farmed salmon, including less omega-3 fats, higher levels of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), which increases the risk of cancer, and higher levels of toxins, such as PCBs.
• GM foods have routinely been found to cause allergic reactions, and no one has investigated GM salmon to see if they would.
• Even if AquaBounty’s fish are 99.9% sterile and all are female, that is still enough to allow interbreeding with wild salmon.

Genetically modifying salmon is playing games with the already weakened wild salmon, at risk from warming and polluted oceans and from loss of their spawning grounds through dammed rivers. Truth hasn’t played much of a part in the push to market these creatures. The risks are, at best, downplayed. More often, they’re ignored. We’re already seeing some of the harm in GM crops, from pesticide-resistant weeds that grow several inches a day, crowding everything else out, to sterile cattle, to enormous rates of animal miscarriages, to sudden crop death, to dead soil and dying forests, genetic engineering by Agribusiness is already proving to be an ecological nightmare, a Pandora’s box of evils that can never be put back.

Tagged agribusiness, aquabounty, aquadvantage fish, frankenfish, genetic engineering, genetic modification, gm fish, gmo, sterile fish, sterile gmo fish, usda