Food Safety

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved last week the first U.S. facility for production of genetically engineered (GE) salmon.

Though the facility near Albany, Indiana, has now been approved, AquaBounty Technologies, Inc. is prohibited from importing eggs necessary for producing GE salmon due to an FDA appropriations law requiring labeling of imported foods derived from “bioengineered” sources. Once the “import alert” labeling guidelines are established, the company will be given the green light to begin production of its AquAdvantage Salmon in the new U.S. facility.

Fish farms are the water-based equivalents of land-based concentrated animal feeding operations, and as such they create the same, if not worse, environmental concerns. Since the salmon pens are placed along wild salmon runs, they pose a severe threat to wild salmon that pass by, exposing wild fish to diseases such as piscine reovirus, which now threatens wild salmon with extinction. Toxicology testing reveals farmed salmon is one of the most toxic foods in the world — more than five times more toxic than any other food tested, with eight times higher PCB levels than wild salmon.

In 2017, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officially banned the use of antibiotics on CAFOs for the purpose of growth promotion and now requires a veterinary prescription for antibiotics on the farms. CAFOs saw little ramifications from the ban, which allows them to continue dispensing antibiotics as usual for purposes of disease prevention. In all, an estimated 80 percent of the antibiotics used in the U.S. are used by industrial agriculture, with industry veterinarians continuing to support their everyday use.