'Frankenfish' or Tomorrow's Dinner?
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday , October 17, 2000 ; Page A01
FORTUNE, Prince Edwards Island –– Amid the winding coves and family farms
that grace this northern island sits an unassuming, dimly lit warehouse.
Inside, dozens of large plastic tubs roil with fish as water pumps hum and
the smell of the ocean fills the air.
It's a decidedly low-tech spot, but a technological revolution is underway.
The first animals genetically engineered for American dinner plates are
being raised here--salmon spliced with genes that make them grow two to four
times faster than nature's best.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is reviewing an application to sell
the fish, a decision that will likely influence the fate of scores of other
biotech animals being brought to life in dozens of similar labs around the
world for humans to eat.
Pigs engineered to have less fat, chicken designed to resist illness-causing
bacteria, beef that can grow twice as fast on less feed--they are all in the
pipeline. Advocates say animal biotechnology can supply abundant food at
increasingly low cost.
But with opponents of genetic engineering already questioning whether
soybeans and corn endowed with new genes are safe for people and the
environment, the prospect of a genetically engineered animal has sparked
intense controversy.
Opponents call the salmon "Frankenfish" and question the ethics of
implanting genes from one animal species into another. The salmon is
economically unnecessary, they argue, and could wreak havoc with the
environment by outcompeting endangered wild salmon.
"This has gotten so much bigger than we ever imagined," said Arnold
Sutterlin, an aquaculture specialist with A/F Protein, an American-Canadian
company that is producing the salmon. "We just thought we were making a
better fish."
The company says there is nothing mysterious about what it is doing, and has
been unusually public about its efforts and plans. A steady stream of
scientists, government officials, even tourists tramp through the warehouse.
Some visitors received samples of the salmon--which looks and tastes the
same as other farmed fish--but the Canadian government put a stop to that.
To create the salmon, scientists spliced into their eggs a growth gene from
the Arcticpout, a fish that thrives in very cold water. That gene allows the
salmon to act like a colder water fish, which means its growth promoter
genes remain more active than a normal salmon. That could be a boon to fish
farmers because their salmon would be ready for market earlier, and would
grow on less food.
But even usually sober scientists worry that not enough is known about such
fish to risk the damage that their release into the wild could cause. And
some researchers argue that conventional crossbreeding of fish can achieve
many of the same results as genetic engineering, with fewer risks.
"There are so many difficult questions raised by these fish, and we just
don't know the answer to many of them," said Robert H. Devlin of Fisheries
and Oceans Canada, who has also been raising and studying biotech salmon in
British Columbia since the early 1990s. He said that research is underway
worldwide to genetically modify at least 25 aquatic species, ranging from
flounder and carp to lobster and shrimp.
"We need to know more about possible environmental impacts, since they could
be substantial," he said. "There are real potential benefits here, but I
haven't seen the scientific studies showing that the risk is under control."
The stakes are especially high in the case of the salmon because both wild
Atlantic salmon and some species of Pacific salmon are depleted or even
officially endangered--the result of decades of overfishing and habitat
destruction. These wild fish now share many of the same waters as the
millions of salmon growing in fish farms along the northern Atlantic and
Pacific coasts, and many scientists are concerned about what might happen if
the engineered salmon escape.
"It doesn't make sense to roll these dice unless we're sure that they won't
come up snake eyes," said William Miller, science adviser to Interior
Secretary Bruce Babbitt.
The most prominent reason for concern is the "Trojan gene" hypothesis of
Purdue University's William Muir. Using a different kind of genetically
engineered fish, Muir found that larger, faster-growing biotech fish are
more likely to succeed in mating than conventional fish. But the offspring
of those biotech fish are genetically less well adapted to survive.
Consequently, Muir believes, biotech fish could quickly decimate a fish
population by their increased ability to produce damaged young. Muir has
proposed further research into this hypothesis, but has been unable to get
funding.
Elliot Entis, president of A/F Protein, says that his company's studies have
not found that its salmon end up being larger than wild salmon at sexual
maturity, meaning they would not have a mating advantage. He also calls the
Trojan gene hypothesis beside the point: Fish breeding technology can render
the biotech fish almost 100 percent female and infertile, he said, and that
means they simply can't reproduce.
In addition, the company has proposed that fertile versions of the fish be
raised only in tanks on land, and that only sterile fish be allowed to be
raised in the traditional ocean cages now commonly found off Maine, Atlantic
Canada, Chile and Norway. Even some critics of genetically modified salmon
acknowledge that that could protect wild salmon from damage being done by
fish farming.
But critics warn that the precautions offered by A/F Protein to keep their
salmon infertile and away from wild fish are not foolproof--and point to the
recent discovery of unapproved biotech corn in taco shells as an indication
of how easily things can go wrong. Even the escape of a handful of fertile
biotech salmon, they say, could have enormous negative consequences.
Salmon farmers and their organizations worldwide have also voiced strong
opposition to the salmon, calling them the solution to a problem that does
not exist. The rapid growth of the salmon farming industry in the past
decade has already caused the price of salmon to plunge in the last decade.
Of even greater concern, the salmon farmers worry that consumers won't want
biotech fish, and their entire industry could be harmed as a result.
Yet Entis said that opposition is considerably thinner than it appears. His
firm already has orders for 15 million biotech salmon eggs, and major
international salmon growers are contacting him all the time, he said.
"They are concerned about some scientific issues, and they are concerned
about whether consumers will accept it," he said. "But they also understand
that our fish would reduce their costs dramatically, and they are always
looking for something like that."
The company has also found significant interest in his biotech fish eggs
abroad--especially in Chile (already a major salmon producer,) in China
(which could grow salmon in its northern waters) and Southeast Asia (which
has an interest in biotech tilapia), he said. The company hopes to open
offices soon in Singapore and Santiago, Chile.
While American attention is focused on the risks of biotech fish, many
poorer countries are more interested in the potential benefits, according to
Eric Hallerman, a member of the National Academy of Sciences' biotechnology
committee. China and Cuba are already raising biotech carp and tilapia, he
said, and China is raising engineered carp as well.
"In those underdeveloped countries, they are eager to move ahead with
commercial uses of biotechnology in fish production," he said. "This
technology can definitely increase productivity by significant amounts, and
that is very important in countries where people don't get the protein they
need."
Because issues raised by the salmon are new and complicated, the FDA made
the unlikely decision to review the fish not as a food, but rather as an
animal "drug" since it changes the growth rate of the animal. Aware of
public concerns about biotech products, the FDA plans to hold public
hearings on the salmon and other possible animal biotech products before
taking any action.
"This is the index case, the first product like this to approve or not
approve," said Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the FDA Center for Veterinary
Medicine. "These are issues as complicated as any we expect to see in a
[genetically engineered] animal. We expect this to provide a good model for
how to regulate similar products in the future."
Because it's unlikely the fish would pose any danger to human health, a
large part of the FDA's assessment of biotech salmon will involve measuring
environmental risks. That has led some to suggest the wrong agency is
reviewing the application. FDA officials said that experts from the
Environmental Protection Agency and the agencies that oversee marine life
will also participate, but the ultimate decision will be made by the FDA.
Officials said it will take at least a year to finish the required human
health and environmental studies; others predict considerably longer. But
even if the FDA approves the salmon, anyone who wants to farm the fish in
coastal waters may have to get approval from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, which have both voiced
opposition recently.
Because of a loophole in the rules governing the importing of animal drugs,
engineered salmon raised abroad could reach American markets sooner. That
loophole was initially written to cover the importation of meat raised
abroad with chemicals that aren't used and haven't been approved in the
United States. However, it could also allow biotech salmon to be imported if
the FDA finds them to be safe for human consumption before tackling the more
complex and time-consuming process of determining environmental safety.
Val Giddings, vice president for food and agriculture of the Biotechnology
Industry Organization, believes there is no reason for the FDA to dawdle on
approving the salmon. "This is not rocket science," he said. "It's a
straightforward question of risk assessment."
But antibiotech and environmental groups have "ginned up a lot of protest
about salmon," so approval is uncertain, he said.
"If [the FDA] screws it up, the salmon case would definitely have spillover
effects on the industry," he said. "But the positive impact of an approval
would actually be disproportionally larger, and would reaffirm the role of
the agency while being another nail in the coffin of the protesters. It
would open the door to lots of terrific innovation."
© 2000 The Washington Post
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