Environmentalist groups want their day in court with the Canadian government, which recently gave permission to a U.S.-based firm to produce genetically modified (GM) salmon eggs within Canadian borders and then ship said eggs off to Panama for further harvesting.
The U.S. firm in question, AquaBounty Technologies, assures that its GM salmon eggs are non-threatening to the environment and are raised in disease-free and antibiotic-free conditions.
However, NGOs like The Ecology Action Centre and Living Oceans Society remain unconvinced, and are suing Environment Canada. The environmentalists argue that the federal department is not following its own legislated rules by approving AquaBounty’s eggs, and that a full risk assessment was not conducted before the Boston-based company was given the greenlight to run its operation in Prince Edward Island.
“This will potentially be the world’s first genetically modified fish available for human consumption and it’s clear the GM industry wants to get other animal products approved after this,” said Mark Butler, campaigner at the Ecology Action Centre, to The Guardian. “We think the measures to avoid mixing with the wild Atlantic salmon are inadequate and once there is genetic contamination the wild salmon is forever changed. It would be a huge live experiment and we wouldn’t know the consequences.”
According to AquaBounty’s chief executive Ron Stotish, the court case comes “completely without merit,” per The Guardian. The GM salmon that the company produces can grow to the same size as wild salmon with 75 percent less feed, AquaBounty says.
