The European table market is not ready for transgenic vertebrates, directly targeting consumers. On the other hand a comprehensive functional genomic analysis can not be said to be completed on that issue. The other effects on interactive gene network is not known. We can not conclude that a complete comprehensive data is available for GM salmon. This is a great chance for us brought by AquaBounty, to discuss about GM regulations in aquatic food production. Aquabounty is visible and legally available for all possible issues on the other hand some other countries which not regulated by EU or FDA, are continuing state supported GM organism production and such projects or results are not accessible by scientist. I encourage Aquabountys` clearity because GM aquatic organisms will not be coming from the west but east as well, even countries regarded as 3rd world are capable of conducting such applications. Technically its not only introducing a constructed gene into the host but performing generations of selective breeding programs to decrease mosaic growth (If the trait is growth) to obtain stable and optimal individuals/product. It is not only a concern of transgenesis application but conducting a comprehensive breeding program to obtain optimal phenotype. No need to mention that this would also effect/alter available known linkage maps and associations in the select species so quantitative geneticists will be having headaches. Simply its a challenge for:

1) Market and consumer experts.

2) Governmental regulators.

3) Export related ministries (e.g. if a transgenic catfish produced for food or ornamental industry). Some ornamental fish species are also edible for consumption and in this case how regulations should cover the issue?

4) Quantitative geneticist. (e.g. What if a transgenic fish is being integrated into a genetic selection program into non GM families).

an so many infact...

Transgenic fish is indeed a contentious issue. Genetic contamination of the wild stock and invasive nature of some of them is definitely an issue in places where there is lot of biodiversity such as tropics. Considering the frequency at which extreme weather/ climate events are happening around the globe, the possibility of escape of transgenic fishes to wild is a real possibility, especially in countries like India. Regulatory control/ enforcement is also relatively loose which might spell doom for the wild stock at a later date.

Simply check out this with....http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22694239 GM salmon can breed with wild fish and pass on genes

I believe that this very interesting question is going to raise a passionate debate between pro- and against GMO.

1 - The interest for Bounty Ltd is one and clear: making money.

2 - What is the environmental interest ?

3 - What is the interest for society ?

4 - What is the interest for the consumer ?

To me, the answers to questions 2,3,4 are "none" or "very limited".

Dear Professor,

In spite of what Dr. Abdulla said, continuous research is on towards developing genetically modified fishes for aquaculture application in India. Although there are reports on benefits of growing such fishes under controlled laboratory conditions exist in literature, to my knowledge, there is hardly any that documented the success story of transgenic fishes in Indian aquaculture industry. There are strong oppositions from various sectors (including the NGOs) on the same and it is the high time to frame precise policies by the Government on this issue, as it involves ethical, religious, cultural, and most importantly, environmental risks. The fact is, we can not predict all of the ecological impacts from the introduction of transgenic fishes and so we must take some precautions to avoid serious and irreversible damage to the ecosystem.

Best

Dola

Hi and thank you all above for interesting contributions to the discussion. I want to comment on a few things concerning the AquaBounty Atlantic salmon.

I mentioned AquaBounty in my question simply because this is the only commercial operation I know of which has come so close to production. I therefore in agreement with Ayna that case of AquaBounty is a good one to base the discussion.

Ayna also points out a recent paper by Oke et al 2013 that "GM salmon can breed with wild fish and pass on genes". Unless it's made sterile, GH-transgenic salmon can of course breed successfully with wild salmon and pass on genes. What Oke et al show, which is actually not surprising at all, is that GH-transgenic Atlantic salmon can also interbreed with a closely related species, the brown trout, and thus pass on the transgenes to another species. This is not surprising, simply because it's well known that these two species can easily interbreed in the wild.

AquaBounty is, of course, well aware of this, so what they propose in their application to the FDA is that the GM-salmon is made sterile by triploidity. However, at the same time they acknowledge that this only makes 99.8% of the salmon sterile. Due to this, apparently, they also propose to make the AquaAdvantage all-female though gynogenesis. I must admit that I can't see how this makes the production more secure. If 1000 fish escape, there will still be 2 fertile females among the escapees. What AquaBounty also plans, and this is a part of their application, see attached file, is that the grow-out of the transgenic salmon will take place in land-based, freshwater facilities in the highlands of Panama!

In my mind it's a bit weird that Canadian company is applying for a license to an US regulatory agency (FDA) to raise fish in Panama?

However, the weirdest part of this, in my mind, is that when I compare the growth rates of the transgenic AquaBounty salmon with the growth rates of the currently commercially grown Norwegian salmon (which has been breeding selected for fast growth for several generations), it seems that the growth rates are more or less the same (when AquaBounty presents growth rates of their GM-salmon, they always compare with wild salmon, which is of course much more slow growing).

So it appears that AquaBounty wants to grow Atlantic salmon in secure, land-based freshwater facilities in Panama, while the Norwegians are producing over 1 million tons annually of salmon that grows just as fast, in open net-pens in the ocean, a much cheaper production method.

So even if Neil is right in assuming that AquaBounty is all about making money, my question is - will they?

Bounty claims that they have solved mosaic/irregular growth pattens so those salmons might not be only GM but DH-Gynogenetic clones (Completely isogenic,) as mentioned. We are also facing huge number of homozygous populations as well. I assume and salmon is just the beginning of the game and some other strategic species will follow (European sea bass D.labrax, breams, tuna). Today a slightest alteration in breeding values of marine fish could rock the market because these species had never been improved by long term genetic selection like Norwegian salmon. This would be where technology converted into investment I guess.

We have roughly two kinds or commercial quality standard for meat products (Non-organic and organic) but now they will be introducing a new one (Non-GMO).

No need to mention the potential availability of the customers ready to pay more for a certified Non-GMO product and guess who could commercially conduct such analysis for Non-GMO certification. A new category of aquatic product standard will take its place. We will pay more for the same product just its because certified as Non-GMO.

Prof Björnsson ,Thanks so much for Env. Safety report. Very interesting and just started to read now.

Indeed an interesting topic, thanks for rise it. Thinking about Björn Thrandur Björnsson comment about the production, well, may be in-land cultures in Panama can be cheaper than open-water cultures in Norwey or Canada. In tropical countries there is a quite developed in-land aquaculture industry whose costs of production are relative low (compared to other countries), the problem there is more related to a poor diversification of culture species. Thus, the possibility to growth salmon in that systems (and weather conditions) is for sure going to be attractive for a wide sector which can be another market opportunity for AquaBounty, selling salmon meat and "seeds". Subsequently, it is also implying a risk in regions were this culture could be possible, but its regulatory system is not well established, meaning not only regulations but controls; thus at a high risk of negative impacts on the local biodiversity. Effects already observed with tilapia hybrids (although they were non-GMO). On the other hand, what about their nutritional profile and quality as food, I'm not sure if there are enough objective studies assessing that, Are there?

Thank you Patricia for your comments. You're absolutely right that there may be a financial benefit to move production to low-wage countries, as we see in so many sectors, and sure, this could be a way of making land-based salmon aquaculture more competitive with the open seacage culture.

Irrespective of the GM question, there's a lot of discussion going on about moving salmon aquaculture onto land. Last fall there was apparently a very interesting conference on this topic held in St Andrews, Canada, see http://asf.ca/landbased-aquaculture.html. On that website, you can find all the 20 presentations as pdf files - a really exemplary dissemination of conference data.

The reasons include, of course, that even the nonGM-salmon has genetic impact on wild salmon populations.

But back to the question of the production of transgenic salmon in Panama. Even if labor is cheap, the Norwegian production is so automated that it's estimated that each person in the aquaculture industry produces about 1000 tons of fish annually, which I think is unheard of anywhere else in the world.

Thus, whether it's Panama or Norway, the feed costs is by far the largest cost item - and if the GM-salmon don't have better FCE than the Norwegian AquaGen, SalmoBreed or similar breeding-selected strains, then there's you're not saving on the feed cost.

And finally, to comment again on the growth rates, I put these attached graphs together a couple of years ago, and I'm just wondering if time hasn't simply run away from AquaBounty? While they have been spending years and years of trying to get their GM salmon strain approved for production, the ongoing breeding selection of non-GM has simply been so effective that it almost looks like the salmon aquacultured today is growing faster than the transgenic AquaAdvantage salmon!

Dear Bjorn,

Many thanks for your very interesting information. I was wondering if the difference between Norvegian and Aquabounty salmon could be the ship sales ? I don't know anything about the salmon geographical market, but I guess that shipping salmon from Panama to America is cheaper than Norway from America ? What do you think ?

Hi Neil, Actually, I was visiting a rainbow trout farm in Denmark last week, and the sell their fish locally in Denmark, as well as in Europe and in Asia (bug part going to the Japanese market). They sell gutted, whole frozen fish, and they said that shipping by boat is so inexpensive that it doesn't actually matter so much where where you ship it. Thus, it cost them fractionally more to ship a ton of fish to Finland than ship it to Asia (perhaps lower harbor and/or unloading fees?).

We were discussing all the advances of local production which is all the rage now, but when life cycle analysis is carried out, you sometimes get a very surprising answer.

PS. I'm still all for local production, even though the local farmer burns more fossil fuel per kilo produce, when bring his few kilos of tomatoes to the local market, than the lorry driver spends driving his tons of tomatoes from Spain to Sweden. ;-)

Back in 2010 we carried out a review for the European Food Safety Authority to define environmental risk assessment criteria for genetically modified fishes to be placed on the EU market. This review was principally to underpin the EFSA and EU stance on GM fishes in Europe and prepare Guidance on the environmental risk assessment of genetically modified animals, including fish. The review can be found on http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/supporting/pub/69e.htm. More details on the whole process can be found on http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/gmanimals.htm?wtrl=01.

Aquabounty have applied for the USFDA licence because they are based out of Massachusetts. They are a biggest player in the market and are developing the salmon eggs in Canada and growing on fish in Panama – the mind boggles about the underlying reasons but they are nothing to do with economics I suspect. You should note GM fishes are already on the market in the form of GLOFISH – initially florescent zebra fish for the aquarium trade but this seems to have moved on(see http://www.glofish.com/).

Thanks Ian for information on the European situation. I'll pick up this review and read it.

I wonder if Osamu Shimomura and his Nobel price colleagues of the 2008 price in chemistry had foreseen the creation of the Glofish® as a the spin-off from their discovery of GFP! ;-)

Thanks Björn and Ian for the informations.

Thinking about the report for FDA and the Land-based Closed-containment benefits for salmon industry, I'm not sure that it has been clearly specified the conditions of that containment. For me that is the main point to consider respect to the environmental impacts, more than the triploidy and mono-sexing. Further the escapes, there is the huge effect of the use of soil/land/water plus the load of chemicals and other wages, etc etc... from an industry that could produce about 1000 tons/person (supposing they can reach the really impressive Norwegian production)... that considering the impact of the semi-intensive cultures of shrimps already exiting in tropical countries.

If GFP ended being used for fluorescent sushi, for sure salmon that are able to growth in the tropics and in-land can have a really long travel away from this starting point. Unfortunately the regulations in several countries in America are still in process for GMO issues, that could be also a reason to culture it in Panama. Even in the report for FDA says that the risk of escapes and contamination in the US is low, but they don't say too much about the risk in Panama environment. I would say that this seems to be a quite convenient strategy to implement the culture of Aquabounty salmon, which in the middle to longer term... well, we'll see.

The reality of the world. There are 3 billion more people on the way and another 2 billion that already exist that want to eat a lot better -- more meat. Agriculture yields are not increasing fast enough to cover the increased animal feed demand (cattle, pigs, chickens, and fish/shrimp) for these people, without plowing up the entire planet and all wild space for agriculture.

Given that reality and the fact that aquatic animals have about a 2 to 3 fold inherent advantage in converting agriculture "feed stuffs" (soy bean, corn, wheat, rye, distillers dry solids, fish meal, byproduct meals, etc.) into useful food (they don't waste energy and food to fight gravity -- stand up -- and keep warm), if we want have the "good life" for the population of the world, we will have to shift our meat supply to aquaculture products. We are doing so today at aquaculture is growing at about 9% per year world wide, even while being zero growth in the US.

We will need GMO fish/shrimp to handle specific resource problems for the world. For example, adding phytase and cellulase genetic capability to a fishes digestive system would allow huge reductions in the eutrophication problems associated with aquaculture production. The anti-GMO activists will ultimately have to face the reality of a finite planet with finite phosphorous supplies and agricultural land. They are behaving like spoiled children who have "seen the light" and want to keep the rest of the world in poverty, while they consume the resources of this planet.

Organizations like WWF can't have truly sustainable aquaculture for the world without genetically modifying the animals for the resources available. Being politically correct is good for fund raising, but not solving actual problem.

If you want to look from a N and C waste perspective, the most efficient is to eat vegetable proteins directly instead of giving them to fish or whatever. Moreover, I've heard that insects beat anything else at that game. Aquaculture is very useful. No doubt about that. But is it really THE savior ? I'm not so sure. The saviors are plural. One day, human will eat directly edible vegetable proteins and make animals transform/produce non-edible proteins. That is the most optimized system I'm able to think about.

The knowledge required to obtain a nutritional balance diets from vegetable proteins is non-trival for most of the world. It is really hard to get enough balanced proteins and essential fatty acids for young fast growing children. A childs vegan diet would look a lot like the vegan carnivorous fish diets -- high protein, medium fat, added vitamins minerals, with some other synthetic amino acids and added long chain omega 3 fatty acids.

Insects do not beat fish/shrimp in the food conversion efficiency game. They can't metabolize cellulose either and a GMO insect with cellulase capacity would help.

Getting the whole world to convert to vegan would only happen with the power of the gun and that is unethical. With seafood, little knowledge is required by the population to get a balanced diet and that fits with the real world.

Asiide from tasting better, seafood is easier to obtain a balanced diet for good healthy growth and brain development.

For old dogs like me, I could eat an unbalanced vegan diet with no apparent impacts, but I am not growing, just maintaining. I can reuse any essential fatty acids and amino acids.