The first genetically engineered animal approved for human consumption by U.S. F. D. A. Spawning a new way of breeding salmon What do you get when you cross a Chinook salmon gene and a DNA sequence from an ocean pout? “A salmon that grows to market size about twice as fast as its natural counterpart,” according to the Chicago Tribune. Coming, perhaps, to your dinner table in 2020. The ocean pout is an eel-like fish that lives in the northwest Atlantic Ocean; the Chinook is the largest variety of Pacific salmon. Rest of the story: http://www.journalgazette.net/opinion/editorials/20190615/spawning-a-new-way-of-breeding-salmon Will you eat this? Frank
I followed that link a bit, and they indicate it will look more like a salmon than an ocean pout. Thank you.
@Nancy Hart I posted this because of the ongoing controversy regarding messing with Mother Nature's genetic system. Is Pout edible? Not by me, after seeing it! Frank
@Von Jones It might very well be, knowing that General Electric Co. might just own a stake in Monsanto! Frank
This has been a controversy here for a long time. A GMO fish may find its way into the ecosystem and corrupt it beyond repair. It will be used in the fish farming industry, which is illegal here, but Atlantic Salmon used for farming in both Washington State and British Columbia have been found in Alaska waters. The impact of GMO fish is unknown. I think they are supposed to be sterile, but Nature finds a way around Man's manipulation. I just read that the so-called sterile male mosquitoes that have been released into the wild to control mosquito population have stimulated the development of parthenogenic females, which, like locust hordes, bypass the normal sexual exchange and lay thousands more eggs than normal, thus now actually INCREASING the mosquito numbers, and all are copies of the females, so they are parthenogenic as well.
I changed the title. It didn’t show any relationship to what the topic was about, and Ken likes titles that explain what the thread is about. I like that, too ! I am guessing that “GE” meant genetic engineering,(or something similar) but I had to actually read the OP to figure out what the thread was about to know where to move it, since it was in the off-topic section of the forum. It was originally something like “GE, Have they gone too far ?”, and I had no clue it was about salmon from reading the title.
When I lived in Western Washington State, I was near Mayfield Lake, and used to fish there a lot, and swim in the shallows. They have a hybrid fish there called the Tiger Muskie, and it is grown for two specific reasons. The first reason (of course) is that sports fishermen LOVE catching these dramatic-looking fish, and they get really big, over 30 lbs. The Tiger Muskie eats minnows from bottom feeder fish like squawfish and suckers, which the lake was overloaded with before the Muskie were placed there, and that is the second reason that they were planted in Lake Mayfield (and other Washington lakes). They are grown in a special hatchery nearby, and moved to the lake when they are still fairly small, but large enough to eat the minnows in the shallow waters. Since they are a hybrid, they are sterile, and possibly, the salmon that Frank initially posted about might be sterile as well, because most hybrids are sterile, and maybe the GMO ones are, too. The article didn’t say. A hybrid is not the same thing as a genetically modified plant or animal, it is simply the intermixing of two organisms that are close enough related to be bred together. A common example that has been around forever, is the mule. They are the offspring of a jack donkey and a mare horse. Less common, is the hinny, which is the result of a stallion with a female donkey, which has more of the characteristics of a horse than the mule does. Genetic modification is the splicing in of the genes of one organism (plant or animal) into another organism that is totally unrelated. With animals , these are called a chimera, and with plants , we just usually say GMO. Here is a Tiger Muskie.
@Don Alaska You convey news that may indicate future horrible consequences. So far, I've avoided getting seriously upset by the genetic manipulation craze grasping the Food Industry, but it's looking bleaker as time goes by. The mosquito news in particular is most unwelcome. Frank