Panama's researchers have played a key role in creating a rapidly growing salmon that may soon become the world's first commercially sold genetically modified (GM) animal.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has ruled the consumption of GM salmon to be as safe as conventional Atlantic salmon, and is now analyzing public comments on its environmental impact as the final part of the approval process.
If the FDA permits the transgenic salmon to be imported for human consumption — which the firm that developed the fish hopes will be granted this year — the research station in Panama that is studying the GM salmon would switch to growing it for the US market.
This would have trickle-down benefits for local firms and ensure further research into GM salmon and how best to grow it, according to Henry Clifford, vice-president of marketing and sales at AquaBounty Technologies, the US biotechnology company that developed the fish, dubbed AquAdvantage salmon, which grows twice as fast as wild salmon.
The project is based in Panama because of the country's long-standing policy support for aquaculture and GM organisms, says Clifford.
He adds that all employees at the Panama research site are local researchers and that one of the reasons the company decided to establish its facility there was because of its "large pool of experienced biologists and production managers with many years of successful experience managing aquaculture operations."
