In a transaction that was 25 years in the making, U.S.-based AquaBounty Technologies announced the sale of 10,000 pounds of its GMO salmon to customers in Canada, meaning “genetically engineered salmon has reached the dinner plate,” says the journal Nature. “This is the first time that a genetically engineered animal has been sold for food on the open market.”
The United States cleared the AquAdvantage salmon for human consumption in November 2015, about six months before Canada gave its approval, but U.S. sales have been blocked by congressional requirements for labels identifying the salmon as GMO. The USDA-FDA funding bill awaiting a vote in the Senate carries a rider that instructs the FDA to put labels on the fish.
Canada does not require a special label on AquaBounty’s salmon, said Nature. Ron Stotish, the company’s chief executive, said the fish was sold for $5.30 a pound. He declined to say who bought it, said Nature.
The AquAdvantage salmon is a variety of Atlantic salmon that includes a growth hormone gene from Chinook salmon so it consumes less feed and grows to marketable size twice as fast as conventional salmon. The FDA conditioned its approval on production of the salmon at two sites outside the United States — Panama and Canada. AquaBounty “plans to ramp up production by expanding a site on Canada’s Prince Edward Island, where local authorities in June gave the green light for construction. That same month, the company also acquired a fish farm in Albany, Indiana, and awaits a nod from U.S. regulators to begin production there,” said Nature.
The co-founder of a genetic engineering company working on cattle hailed AquaBounty’s success as a stimulant for the transgenic industry, said Nature. It quoted James West of AgGenetics as saying, “If they had failed it might have killed the engineered livestock industry for a generation.”
The Indiana facility could produce 1,200 tonnes of salmon, worth $10 million in sales, annually at top capacity, AquaBounty said in a statement. The company described the facility as “its first commercial-scale facility in the United States” for growing its salmon, reported Feed Navigator. The fish would be grown from eggs hatched at the site.