Three U.S. consumer groups—Food & Water Watch, Consumers Union, and the Center for Food Safety—submitted a formal petition to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in February asking the organization to re-evaluate a new genetically engineered (GE) salmon before declaring it safe to eat.  Currently the salmon, a product of AquaBounty Technologies, is classified as a new animal drug.  The FDA calls any genetically modified food a new animal drug throughout the approval process. The petition calls for the fish, called AquAdvantage salmon to be classified as a food additive, which would require a far more rigorous FDA review, the sort that is required for any novel substance added to food. 

According to Food & Water Watch executive director, Wenonah Hauter, “The date FDA has on GE salmon, which were supplied by Aquabounty, are incomplete, biased, and cannot be relied upon to show that the GE salmon is safe to consume.  Aquabounty’s own study shoed that GE salmon may contain increased levels of IGF-1, a hormone that helps accelerate the growth of transgenic fish and is linked to breast, colon, prostate, and lung cancer.”

In order to create it AquAdvantage salmon, the company genetically engineered an Atlantic salmon by adding a Chinook salmon growth-hormone gene that provides the fish with the ability to grow to market size in half the time as conventional salmon.

The consumer groups’ petition says the way the salmon are created significantly alters their composition and nutritional value, so that they should be treated as a food additive.  As such, the fish would be considered unsafe to eat unless Aquabounty’s data overwhelmingly proved otherwise.

Aquabounty has submitted an application to the FDA for approval of the GE salmon under the new animal drug guidelines of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, but even members of the FDA’s own advisory committee say the agency’s review of the transgenic salmon under this process aren’t stringent enough.  The consumer groups emphasize that a proper review process would require the salmon to undergo extensive toxicological studies, especially those developed to ensure that foods entering the market are both properly labeled and safe to consume.

While genetically modified vegetables such as corn have long been sold in the U.S., if approved, AquAdvantage would be the first genetically altered animal for human consumption in the nation.