Biotechnology and Bioinformatics (1+1)

2.2.8. Food safety of transgenic (GM) fish

GM food safety depends on the

• nature of the gene ,
• the transgene product it encodes and
• the resulting phenotype. In addition, it is important to ensure that the insertion of a new gene has not affected an endogenous gene or had other pleiotropic effects.
• Ethics and animal protection concerns allows the development of healthy and safe fish only.
• Transgenic fish have received extra copies of GH genes, resulting in only moderately raised levels of circulating GH.
• GH is a protein hormone which is degraded along with all other food protein. Meat from fish modified with GH is regarded as completely safe for human consumption.

A National Research Council study maintains there is a low to moderate food safety risk from GM fish. Since transgene can introduce new protein into a food product, there are concerns that this technique could introduce an allergen, known or previously unknown, into the food supply.

Berkowitz and Krypsin-Sorensen (1994) discussed food safety issues posed by transgenic fish.

• If the animal’s health is not negatively affected by transgenes or transgene product, it can be inferred that GM fish do not represents health hazards for human consumption.
• Concerns have been voiced of the possible risks of consumption of transgenes, their resulting protein, potential production of toxins by aquatic transgenic organisms, changes in the nutritional composition of foods, activation of viral sequence s and allergenicity of transgenic products.
• These risks have been analyzed, and while the majority of genetic modification to foodstuffs will be safe the greater potential for risk and harm is allergenicity.
• In the case of fast-growing GH fish, symptoms similar to acromegaly can be observed in some of the animals with higher growth levels, although the general impression at present is that the majority of transgenics are healthy.

About 98 percent of the dietary DNA from fish including GMOs is degraded by digestive enzymes relatively quickly but use of viruses as vector s, might increase the risk factor significantly as these are organisms which are adapted to integrating into host genome s.