Genetically modified salmon will soon hit dinner plates.
The Food and Drug Administration announced Friday that it would be allowing the genetically modified salmon, known as AquAdvantage salmon, to be imported to the U.S., lifting a ban that has been in place since 2016.
Manufacturer AquaBounty Technologies genetically engineered the fish so that it grows almost twice as fast as traditional Atlantic salmon despite not needing to eat as much. All the fish it grows are female and therefore cannot breed with each other.
The FDA concluded in 2015 that the genetically modified salmon was “safe to eat,” and that the genetic engineering methods were safe for the fish, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a statement.
Despite the approval, the fish weren’t allowed to come to market for a few years because Congress asked the FDA to hold off until regulators set rules about how the food should be labeled. Last year, the Department of Agriculture stipulated that all bioengineered food has to be labeled as such, resolving the issue for salmon and allowing the FDA to approve it in the action announced Friday.
“We are delighted that FDA has lifted the import alert, which will allow AquaBounty to begin producing and marketing AquAdvantage Salmon in the United States,” Sylvia Wulf, Chief Executive Officer of AquaBounty, said in a statement. “As FDA notes in this announcement, our salmon was approved by the agency over three years ago based upon a very comprehensive science-based review process, which established that our salmon was safe, nutritious, and environmentally sound and met all other regulatory requirements.
Genetically modified foods, or GMOs, are foods whose genes have been changed to help them grow faster or for other purposes such as becoming more resistant to bad weather or insects. GMOs have not shown evidence of health risks in humans, but they are one of the most debated topics in agriculture. Critics of the genetically engineered salmon call it “Frankenfish.”
[Also read: Trump’s new GMO food labels leave greens fuming]
Alaska’s salmon industry opposes the entrance of the new fish into the market. In January, both of Alaska’s senators, Republicans Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, pressed for the passage of a bill saying that all genetically engineered salmon should have the label “GE” or “genetically engineered” on its products. Current Agriculture Department rules allow companies to label their products using the term “bioengineered.”
Genetically engineered salmon already is being sold in Canada. The fish and its eggs will soon be imported to the AquaBounty Technologies facility in Indiana. Most of the salmon people eat comes from farms and not from the wild, largely because of over-fishing and environmental deterioration.
CORRECTION: In a previous version of this story, the Washington Examiner erroneously reported that AquAdvantage salmon is raised with growth hormones, when in fact, it is genetically engineered. The Washington Examinerregrets the error.
