Canada okays genetically-modified salmon for food

Canada on Thursday approved a type of genetically-modified salmon as safe to eat, making it the first transgenic animal destined for Canadian dinner tables.

This comes six months after the US gave the green light to sell the fish in American grocery stores.

The decisions by Health Canada and the US Food and Drug Administration follow two decades of controversy over the fish, which is an Atlantic salmon injected with genes from Pacific Chinook salmon and a fish known as the ocean pout to make it grow faster.

The resulting fish, called AquAdvantage Salmon, is made by AquaBounty Technologies, Massach-usetts, and can reach adult size in 16 to 18 months instead of 30 months for normal Atlantic salmon. The firm is raising them in contained, land-based hatcheries in Canada.

Health Canada said testing over three years found the altered salmon “to be as safe and nutritious as conventional salmon.”

Consumer groups, however, raised concerns that it could be dangerous to human health and may pose risks to other fish if it were to escape into the environment. “We find it deplorable that the (Canadian) population is now faced with the commercialisation of the first GM animal in the world, approved in Canada without consultation and without independent studies,” said Thibault Rehn of Vigilance OGM.