Almost 30,000 comments have poured into the U.S. Food and Drug Administration about Canadian genetically modified salmon since the agency announced preliminary assessments found the altered fish pose no significant environmental impact.
The response has been so strong in the past two months that the FDA was asked to extend the public comment period, and it issued a statement Wednesday to say comments will remain open an additional 60 days, until April 26.
Morgan Liscinsky, spokesperson for the FDA, said the agency will review the comments after that and decide how to proceed.
"FDA will complete the review of the AquAdvantage Salmon application and will reach a decision on approval," Liscinsky said in an email.
"At this point it is not possible to predict a timeline for when these decisions will be made."
Developed at Memorial University in Newfoundland and the University of Toronto, the eggs are produced at AquaBounty Farms in Prince Edward Island and the fish are reared in Panama.
The Atlantic salmon egg is modified with genes from chinook salmon and an eel-like fish called the ocean pout, which makes the fish grow twice as fast as conventional fish, cutting in half the time it takes to reach market size.
Calls to Massachusetts-based AquaBounty Technologies, the company that wants to produce AquAdvantage commercially, were not immediately returned.
