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The eminent fisheries writer Paul Greenberg recently gutted and filleted the rationale for a novel type of farmed salmon genetically altered to grow faster. The “improved” fish, created by a Massachusetts-based company called AquaBounty Technologies, threatens to “escape and contaminate wild populations of salmon,” Greenberg wrote. And the business model AquaBounty has in mind is ecologically insane: “the fish requires much wasteful transport since it would be cloned in Canada, grown in Panama, and then flown back to the U.S. for consumption.” On top of those obvious drawbacks, the GMO salmon literally offers no benefits to the environment or consumers. “It is completely unnecessary,” he concludes. Its only rationale is economic — as defined narrowly by the interests of the AquaBounty shareholders. Greenberg writes:

“It seems to me that what the AquaBounty AquAdvantage salmon represents is the privatization of the salmon genome. Should salmon farming come to be dominated by the AquAdvantage fish, farmers could become dependent on a single company for their stock, just as soy, corn, and wheat farmers must now rely on large multinationals like Monsanto to provide seed for their fields year in and year out. AquaBounty will literally own salmon farming.”