LPT 321: Meat Science (1+1)

AQUAADVANTAGE SALMON 

Aquaadvantage Salmon

• Aquaadvantage atlantic salmon is a genetically modified salmon, which is an Atlantic Salmon , modified by adding a growth hormone regulating gene from a Pacific Chinook Salmon and a promoter  from an ocean pout to the Atlantic's 40,000 genes.
• These genes enable it to eat year-round, instead of only during spring and summer. The purpose of the modifications is to increase the speed at which the fish grows, without affecting its ultimate size or other qualities.
• The fish grows to market size in 16 to 18 months rather than three years.

Concerns

• Concerns raised about the release of genetically modified animals include potential negative human health and environmental effects.
• There are concerns that the genetically modified salmon could have an adverse effect on wild salmon populations should they escape from the farms.
• Aquaculture that uses naturally-occurring salmon, mostly Atlantic salmon, cultivates the fish in net pens.
• In North America, this occurs mostly in coastal waters along Washington State, British Columbia and Maine.
• Ocean-cultured fish can escape and compete with native (non-Atlantic) stocks. By some estimates, 400,000 to 1 million Atlantic salmon have escaped from the 75 or so operations in British Columbia.
• A Purdue University computer model showed that 60 transgenic medaka interbreeding in a population of 60,000 wild fish would leave the wild fish extinct in 40 generations.
• The fish's developer has allayed these fears by publicly announcing the adoption of the following measures:
• Cultivating only (99 %+) sterile females at inland farms.
• Any escapees will not be able to reproduce, either natively or by interbreeding with wild stocks, because they are all triploid, with three sets of chromosomes.
• They are to provide farmers with eggs rather than fish.