AquaBounty pursues cash infusion

AquaBounty Technologies — the Massachusetts-based company behind genetically engineered (GE) salmon — on Wednesday announced that it is trying to raise an additional USD 2 million by issuing new shares. The move is subject to shareholder approval at the company’s general meeting on 22 March.

Combined with last month’s announcement that it is reducing its operating costs by about 30 percent and increasing its cash flow, AquaBounty said it expects to generate enough funds to met expenses through early 2013.

Last year, the company indicated that it had only enough funs to take it into the second quarter of 2012. Then in late January, it announced that it is restructuring at the end of the first quarter, in light of the continuing uncertainty surrounding the timing of U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval.

In September 2010, FDA scientists preliminary determined that AquAdvantage Salmon is safe for human consumption, but an FDA advisory committee subsequently determined that more research is needed. It’s been 16 years since AquaBounty submitted its first GE fish study to the FDA.

In June 2011, an amendment that would essentially handcuff the FDA from approving GE salmon for human consumption was slipped into an agriculture-spending bill, but Congress eventually rejected the amendment.

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