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Study Exposes AquaBounty’s Bogus Growth Claims on GMO Salmon

Guest Contributor
Oct. 22, 2015 12:41PM EST GMO

For those of you who have read the Mary Shelley novel “Frankenstein,” you remember that the name refers to the scientist Victor Frankenstein, not the monster he constructed from body parts found in the local cemetery. The story has captured the public’s imagination for nearly 200 years, and “franken” has become a common prefix—and a pejorative—for genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which are made with cut-and-pasted genetic material from different species of plants, animals and microorganisms.

GMO salmon is an Atlantic salmon whose DNA has been re-engineered with a “growth-hormone gene construct” made from genetic material of other fish. Photo credit: Steve Rhodes / Flickr

GMO salmon—or franken-fish, as it is sometimes called—is an Atlantic salmon whose DNA has been re-engineered with a “growth-hormone gene construct” made from genetic material of other fish. One of these fish, the ocean pout, is only as closely related to Atlantic salmon, taxonomically speaking, as a human is related to a porcupine or a platypus. This recombination of genetic material would never happen in nature.

Beyond being designed and engineered by humans and created in a laboratory, GMO salmon and Frankenstein’s monster may also share another defining feature—larger-than-normal proportions. AquaBounty Technologies, the company behind GMO salmon, has always insisted that its fish grow much faster than normal Atlantic salmon—but not larger. This is one of the most frequent claims the company makes—to journalists and even to financial regulators at the Securities Exchange Commission.

Protest march opposing FDA approval of GMO salmon, Market Street, San Francisco, Feb. 9, 2013. Photo credit: Steve Rhodes / Flickr

But, according to a recently released scientific review from the Canadian government, AquaBounty doesn’t have a shred of evidence supporting this claim. This is more than a little odd because AquaBounty calls GMO salmon the “most studied fish in the world.”

If it turns out that GMO salmon do grow larger than normal salmon, it would almost certainly provoke even further consumer opposition to the fish while also compromising the company’s pending risk assessment with the FDA. As Canadian government scientists note, a larger-than-normal Atlantic salmon would be able to eat larger-than-normal prey fish, and this expanded diet could expand the environmental impact of escaped GMO salmon.

Other important risk-assessment questions also emerge: What happens to the health of a GMO salmon that reaches ever-large proportions? What happens to the nutritional content of the fish for consumers? What happens to the hormone levels of this fish, which is engineered with a growth-hormone gene construct?

Again, we don’t know if GMO salmon do grow larger than normal salmon, but given AquaBounty’s track record of questionable claims, it needs to be checked out. The company’s claims about GMO salmon’s fast growth-rate have turned out to be bogus, as the preponderance of evidence indicates GMO salmon probably grow slower than conventional farmed salmon. Likewise, the company has long trumpeted its safe, biosecure production of GMO salmon, but independent sleuthing has revealed “lost” salmon, a major accidental disease outbreak and a $9,500 fine for failing to comply with environmental regulations.

If approved by the FDA, AquaBounty’s salmon will be the first GMO animal to enter the food supply anywhere in the world, so it’s scary to realize how little the world knows about the basic biology of this fish—a situation that is unlikely to be addressed if the FDA continues to ignore its role as a science-based regulator.

While there are sizable gaps in what we know about this fish, there is still plenty of evidence showing that AquaBounty’s salmon is totally unnecessary for our food system, presenting substantial risks to the environment and consumers but no benefits.

EcoWatch initially posted this blog with numerous editorial changes not authorized by the author. We deeply regret the error and have restored the blog to its initial content.

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"There's a definite rhetoric of, 'We're going to build it back better. We're going to win. We're going to beat this. Something technological is going to come and it's going to save us,'" said A.R. Siders, an assistant professor with the disaster research center at the University of Delaware and lead author of the paper, to the New York Times. "It's like, let's step back and think for a minute. You're in a fight with the ocean. You're fighting to hold the ocean in place. Maybe that's not the battle we want to pick."

Rethinking retreat could make it a strategic, efficient, and equitable way to adapt to the climate crisis, the study says.

Dr. Siders pointed out that it has happened before. She noted that in the 1970s, the small town of Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin moved itself out of the flood plain after one too many floods. The community found and reoriented the business district to take advantage of highway traffic and powered it entirely with solar energy, as the New York Times reported.

That's an important lesson now that rising sea levels pose a catastrophic risk around the world. Nearly 75 percent of the world's cities are along shorelines. In the U.S. alone coastline communities make up nearly 40 percent of the population— more than 123 million people, which is why Siders and her research team are so forthright about the urgency and the complexities of their findings, according to Harvard Magazine.

Some of those complexities include, coordinating moves across city, state or even international lines; cultural and social considerations like the importance of burial grounds or ancestral lands; reparations for losses or damage to historic practices; long-term social and psychological consequences; financial incentives that often contradict environmental imperatives; and the critical importance of managing retreat in a way that protects vulnerable and poor populations and that doesn't exacerbate past injustices, as Harvard Magazine reported.

If communities could practice strategic retreats, the study says, doing so would not only reduce the need for people to choose among bad options, but also improve their circumstances.

"It's a lot to think about," said Siders to Harvard Magazine. "And there are going to be hard choices. It will hurt—I mean, we have to get from here to some new future state, and that transition is going to be hard.…But the longer we put off making these decisions, the worse it will get, and the harder the decisions will become."

To help the transition, the paper recommends improved access to climate-hazard maps so communities can make informed choices about risk. And, the maps need to be improved and updated regularly, the paper said as the New York Times reported.


"It's not that everywhere should retreat," said Dr. Siders to the New York Times. "It's that retreat should be an option. It should be a real viable option on the table that some places will need to use."

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