In November 2015, the US Food and Drug Administration approved a breed of fast-growing Atlantic salmon to be the first genetically engineered animal available for consumption. That was the end of the more than two decades of struggle in regulating genetically modified organisms or GMOs.
Alison Van Eenennaam, an animal geneticist at the University of California, Davis, said at the time that it opens up the possibility of harnessing the technology. “The regulatory roadblock had really been disincentivizing the world from using it,” she added.
Now AquaBounty Technologies, the Massachusetts-based company which developed the genetically engineered fish, revealed that it was able to sell 4.5 tons of the distinct product on August 4. This happened in Canada.
According to Ron Stotish, the company’s chief executive, they were able to sell its commercial batch at a market price of US$5.30 per pound or $11.70 per kilogram. There was no mention about who bought the goods.
Photo by AquaBounty Technologies
The fishes sold were bred in tanks in a small facility in Panama. Plans to expand in Prince Edward Island in Canada have been announced, with construction for the facility already approved by the local authorities there.
A fish farm in Indiana is also already set to produce the genetically engineered fish, only requiring the approval of regulators to begin the production.
No other company has ever achieved the selling of a genetically engineered animal for food on the open market so far except AquaBounty.
What makes this fish, a variety of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar), special is that it is engineered to grow faster than its non-genetically modified counterpart, which allows to reach market size in roughly half the time or about 18 months.
Stock photo
Such technology was developed as early as 1989. The scientists were able to put a growth-hormone gene from Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), along with genetic regulatory elements from a third species, the ocean pout (Zoarces americanus) into the fast-growing fish.
In the early 1990s, AquaBounty reached out to regulators but were immediately unwelcomed. Hence, the more than a score battle in regulations.
It was only in 2015 that they got the landmark decision, and now their first sale.
Sources: Scientific American | Nature
