After 18 years, the US authorities will decide whether to approve marketing of genetically modified salmon for food
In 1928, the Soviet biologist Giorgi Karpechenko tried to create a hybrid between radish and cabbage, in order to get the ideal plant (at least according to the perception and needs of Mother Russia) - having a radish root and cabbage leaves. Hybridization seemed possible, as the two plants are relatively close, but all his efforts produced sterile plants. However - one day luck struck him, and he discovered some seeds in one of the hybrid plants. He hurried to sow them, but the result was a little disappointing - the plants he grew had cabbage root and radish leaves...
In the end, Karpchenko was executed in 1941 - not because of the failed result of the experiment, but because of false suspicions that he was a member of an anti-Soviet organization. However, his experiment beautifully illustrates man's ambition to overcome nature, and to produce for himself plant varieties that meet exactly his needs. This ambition existed thousands of years before Karpchenko. Almost since the beginning of human civilization, man has learned to identify the best plants for him (for example, those with the largest fruits, or the large number of berries), and to sow their seeds. Later, farmers also learned to make more successful hybrids than those of Karpchenko - and to combine in one plant several important features such as large fruit and resistance to cold, or a thick (edible) root in a plant resistant to diseases or pests.
Genetic Engineering
Deciphering the structure of DNA and the mechanism of heredity (last week marked the 60th anniversary of Watson and Crick's groundbreaking article) - soon paved the way for real genetic engineering in edible plants. Today, when scientists can know the role of each gene in a plant, they can also do sophisticated manipulations and implant genes into the plant as they wish. Theoretically, we can grow plants that will yield more, have a longer shelf life, consume less water, be resistant to pests/diseases/cold and so on. In practice - it is very difficult to produce plants that will have all these qualities together, because they usually come at the expense of each other. Nevertheless, genetic engineering still allows us to introduce formidable improvements in plants. The main problem is safety - there is a great fear that genes from the genetically engineered plants will be transferred to wild plants, and we will not be able to know how they will affect the plants and the environment as a whole (what will happen, for example, if we plant resistance to herbicides in the plant, so that we can spray the field with such substances without harming the crop, but Will the resistance genes also pass to the harmful weeds?). It is also impossible to know if the genes implanted in the plant will mutate and go out of our control. In the best case that could cause heavy damage to the crop or the environment, in the worst case, it could make the transgenic plant toxic. Due to these dangers, the authorities demanded more and more tests before approving the cultivation of transgenic plants for food. The first plant to be honored was a tomato that was engineered to slow down rotting processes, which gave it an especially long life in the refrigerator, while maintaining a fresh texture. These tomatoes were approved for consumption in the US in 1994, but failed financially and their cultivation was stopped. In the following years, several more genetically modified crops for food were approved in the USA, including potatoes that are resistant to herbicides, corn that is resistant to harmful insects, and recently also rice that has been engineered so that its grains contain more beta-carotene (the source of vitamin A). In the European Union, on the other hand, the policy is much more conservative, and permission to grow transgenic plants is given sparingly, this too mainly for plants that are not edible plants - for example tobacco, cotton and ornamental flowers. Although the use of genetically modified plants is already quite widespread in the US and developing countries such as China, it is still at the center of public debate. The supporters of the genetically modified plants explain that in a few years this will be the only way to feed the growing world population. Opponents claim that the plants are not safe and even cause damage to the environment and harm the existing balance in nature.
(I have) such a life
If the issue of genetically modified plants arouses sharp public controversy, it is as nothing compared to the storm generated by another idea - genetically modified animals for food. The first animal that approaches the heart of the conflict is the salmon. Already in 1989, Canadian scientists were able to engineer salmon fish so that their cells produce a very large amount of growth hormone. The result - fish that grow twice as fast as normal fish, and reach their final size within a year and a half, instead of three years. The genetically engineered fish are also supposed to be about 50% larger than normal fish. The patent was adopted by an American commercial company AquaBounty which turned the fish into a commercial product. To reduce the risk to the environment and to prevent possible damage to the natural salmon population, the company does not grow the fish in the sea, but only in ponds and tanks far from the coast. On top of that, the company only markets barren females, so even if its fish accidentally end up in the wild, they won't be able to breed there.
The basis of the idea is of course also the company's business model. It will sell eggs or fry to breeders, they will raise them in half the time (and investment), and market the mature fish - but they will not be able to breed the fish themselves, and will be forced to come back and buy more and more cycles of fish from the company. In 1995, the company started procedures to obtain approval for the product from the American Food and Drug Administration, FDA. After six years of experiments and research, AquaBounty submitted to the FDA the studies regarding the safety of the product, and again long years of investigations and tests were required, in which the administration was also required to formulate its own procedures for testing genetically modified animals. In 2010, the long-awaited seal finally arrived, and the FDA confirmed that the genetically engineered salmon was safe to eat. But it was still not the end of the road. Now the administration is required to approve the growing conditions and make sure that they do not pose an environmental danger. Just a year ago, the FDA finished the environmental assessment, and at the end of last year published the findings, to allow the public to submit objections. The deadline for submitting reservations expired a few days ago, and now the company hopes that after 18 years of procedures they can - finally - start marketing the genetically engineered salmon. For comparison, the approval process for the genetically engineered tomato mentioned earlier took three years.
A hole in the pocket
The lengthy procedure and the large financial investment in the development of the genetically engineered fish brought AquaBounty to the brink of bankruptcy. Last year, the company was forced to lay off many employees and sell its research and development arm, and even then managed to survive financially only thanks to recruiting another investor at the last minute. However, even if AquaBounty receives the long-awaited approval, it still has a long way to go to rest and inheritance.
Environmental organizations have already announced that they will fight with all their might to prevent the distribution of the genetically modified fish into stores, but they may very well have to work hard to find the genetically modified fish. Currently, AquaBounty has one breeding center, in Panama, which, according to the optimistic calculations, will be able to sell to the market about 100 tons of fish per year - a rather small amount out of about 230,000 tons that are marketed in the US every year (most of them are raised in cages in the ocean). Even at full production, the breeding farm in Panama will need several decades just to cover the funds that AquaBounty has invested so far, but of course they hope to open more such farms, and enter additional markets, including China and South America.
The degree of economic success of the transgenic salmon will largely mark the continuation of the transgenic animal industry. This industry holds tremendous potential - not only in the food field but also in the pharmaceutical field. For example, it is possible to engineer cows so that their milk contains certain substances that patients need, such as anticoagulants for hemophiliacs. However, the prolonged mask of agony that AquaBounty went through in the US deters other companies, and they prefer at this stage to watch from the sidelines, or direct their investments in development to countries like China, where the public's positions on such issues carry less weight.
see also: By the middle of the century there will be no fish in the sea
