January 2, 2013 — A genetically engineered salmon — dubbed “Frankenfish” by critics — could be facing an upstream swim despite preliminary FDA approval, with another federal agency’s official and advocates questioning whether the fast-growing farm fish might pose a threat to wild salmon.
Maynard-based AquaBounty Technologies — with a genetically modified fish that grows twice as fast as native Atlantic salmon — won a key victory in its quest to put the fish on American dinner plates late last month when a Food and Drug Administration report found the highly controlled process of raising largely sterile fish would have “no significant impact” on the environment.
But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is raising concerns about the experimental product.
“Although AquaBounty claims their fish are sterile, that sterilization process is not 100 percent. There is the possibility that some of these fish could escape and reproductively interact with wild native salmon,” James Geiger, an assistant regional director for fisheries in the wildlife service’s Northeast region, told the Herald. “Any potential offspring could reduce the biological and ecological fitness of the native wild salmon.”
Read the full story at the Boston Herald