© AquaBounty
Senators from Alaska and other salmon-producing states are
battling to prevent the approval of genetically engineered salmon - what they like to call it "frankenfish." But their efforts are likely to fall on deaf ears, since the FDA appears to be hellbent on providing U.S. consumers with their first GE animal food, and could announce approval within the next few months.
Alaska Senators Mark Begich, a Democrat, and Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, have crossed party lines to reintroduce a bill last week that would ban biotech salmon, developed by a Massachusetts-based company called AquaBounty Technologies. Begich is worried that AquaBounty's salmon would harm his state's important wild salmon fisheries, though it's not clear that he's right about that since wild salmon and farmed salmon - which would include the GE variety - are priced very differently and have two distinct markets.
Begich also calls AquaBounty's salmon, which is engineered to grow almost twice as fast as normal, "
risky, unprecedented and unnecessary," and on these counts he might be right. As I've noted before,
GE salmon won't provide any significant benefit to anybody except the people at AquaBounty. It's not going to be priced lower for shoppers, and, according to a Swedish study, the fish
might be prone to collect more environmental toxins in their flesh than native species.
Comment: To learn more about the benefits of Vitamin B read the following:
Vitamin B 'Can Rewire Stroke Patients' Brain', Study Finds
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Study: B vitamins could lower risk of macular degeneration
B-vitamin Deficiency May Cause Vascular Cognitive Impairment