Tue. Dec 10th, 2024
Fresh fish vs Frankenfish
Fresh fish vs Frankenfish

Credit to EarthJustice, “Because the earth needs a good lawyer.”- August 9, 2016 –

On July 29th, a new bill was signed into law. The House and Senate passed a bill prohibiting states from labeling Genetically Engineered (GE) fish.

Here’s the problem:

“The fish in question are the spawn of a company called AquaBounty Technologies and are engineered in laboratories to grow twice as fast as wild salmon.

AquaBounty plans to produce the GE salmon eggs on Prince Edward Island, Canada, and send the salmon on a 5,000-mile journey before they reach U.S. supermarkets.

The salmon will be grown to market size in a facility in Panama, processed into fillets, then shipped to the United States for sale. That complicated scheme is only for the initial approval, however.

AquaBounty has publicly announced plans to ultimately grow its GE fish in the United States and other places around the world. Despite this, the FDA has chosen to limit the scope of its review to the Canada and Panama facilities.

U.S. Atlantic salmon, and many populations of Pacific salmon, are protected by the Endangered Species Act and in danger of extinction. A keystone species, salmon have unique runs that have been treasured by human cultures for thousands of years.

But the FDA has failed to study and prevent impacts to these imperiled salmon runs should GE salmon escape or be accidentally released into the environment.

Not only can these engineered salmon crossbreed with wild native fish, they can also threaten wild populations by out-competing them for scarce resources and habitat, or by introducing new diseases.”

EarthJustice is challenging the decision in Court.

(Refer to our article published November 19, 2015, “Frankenfish safe to eat?”)

One thought on “States Prohibited from Labeling GE Fish”
  1. Can the people recall congressmen and senators? We need to get rid of our so-called representatives as loudly and publicly as possible.These representatives are in some corporation’s pocketbook. No individual voter is so stupid that they would vote for something that could, and most likely will, wipe out an entire keystone species They certainly are not acting in the best interest of the citizens or salmon. As far as I am concerned the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster is the last “we know what we are doing” project the “Boys and their toys” will be allowed to expose other living creatures. Aqua Bounty Tech. is right down their with Dow and Monsanto. Why should it be alright for any body or CORPORATION to engage in activities that have the ability to create such devastation that no amount of money or technology can undo the damage. In the case of Fukushima massive amounts of radiation over massive amounts of land and ocean will continue to be released for an incredible amount of time.

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