An end to genetically engineered salmon plans?
A company that produced genetically engineered salmon has announced plans to cease fish farming operations and cull all its remaining fish. Massachusetts-based AquaBounty Inc. had farmed the controversial farmed fish, the first genetically engineered animal approved for human consumption.
After closing down some of its operations in recent years and finding it hard to raise money, “we therefore have no alternative but to close down our remaining farm operations and reduce our staff,” according to a press release. The company had faced boycott campaigns and a lawsuit from various environmental groups over the years, and the fish had never been available at grocery stores.
Seattle-area individuals and organizations were among those who had long opposed plans to sell the farmed fish. PCC had formally opposed Food and Drug Administration approval of GE salmon in a 2013 letter and was the first of thousands of grocers around the country to sign a pledge not to sell genetically engineered fish. The FDA received nearly 2 million letters against the 2013 proposal.
In 2019, Northwest tribal members encouraged the general public to protest a later FDA decision allowing AquaBounty to import eggs from its Canadian hatchery to grow GE salmon in the U.S. Opponents called the GE salmon a “Frankenfish” whose environmental and human impacts hadn’t been adequately researched.
The Center for Food Safety (CFS) cheered the closure news, crediting boycott campaigns and the lawsuit from CFS, Earth Justice and the Quinault Indian Nation for keeping the fish from dinner plates.
AquaBounty’s announcement “proves what we have always said: that this dangerous product cannot both comply with environmental laws and become a commercial reality,” said Amy van Saun, senior attorney for CFS and counsel in the case, in a press release. “It’s gratifying that this risk to our wild fisheries and oceans is at an end, and we will continue to demand that our government prevents such risky profit-driven experiments from coming to our oceans and our plates.”