July 7, 2011

Frankenfish thrown out of US Congress

What do you get when you cross an Atlantic salmon, Chinook salmon and ocean pout? Frankenfish!

In the ongoing battle over the future of genetically modified salmon, it looks like ‘those opposed’ win this round. The US House of Representatives recently passed an amendment in a draft bill that would stop the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from reviewing any genetically engineered salmon proposed for sale in the US.

This legislative development directly affects the efforts by AquaBounty Technologies, the developer of the AquaAdvantage fish, to get approval to sell its modified Atlantic salmon.

To read a refreshingly simple article about why AquaBounty’s modified salmon is completely unnecessary in the first place, see: Genetically engineered salmon’s fishy promises

Concerned about the potential approval of Frankenfish in Canada? Read our blog post: Are ‘Frankenfish’ headed for grocery store shelves in Canada?
 

Spotlight on wild Atlantic salmon

On the east coast, the salmon farming industry is threatening the marine ecosystem in many of the same sad ways it is on the west coast. But unlike on the west coast, farmed Atlantic salmon that escape or ‘leak’ from their pens can actually interbreed with threatened or endangered wild stocks and weaken their gene pool. There are so few wild Atlantic salmon left – there isn’t even a commercial fishery anymore – that any such threat to their survival is a serious concern for everyone.

The Atlantic Salmon Federation (ASF) and the American non-profit Conservation Fund are taking action. The organizations have teamed up on an exciting new closed containment research project!

According to the ASF, the purpose of the project is “to develop systems to reduce the massive impact salmon aquaculture is presently having on the inshore marine environment, on wild Atlantic salmon populations, and on other species affected by aquaculture’s wastes, pesticide impact on other species, and escape of farmed fish on critically low numbers of wild Atlantic salmon in the regions where net-pen operations exist.”

With every new closed containment project, we’re this much closer to getting these net cages out of our oceans and saving our wild salmon – Pacific and Atlantic.

Read the ASF press release and backgrounder.

Update: Canadian ‘organic’ farmed salmon

Thank you to those who submitted a comment to the Canadian General Standards Board (CGSB) and signed our petition calling for Canada’s proposed Organic Aquaculture Standards to meet the basic principles of organic production, and to stop the ‘organic’ labeling of net-cage farmed salmon.

We received almost 1,500 petition signatures by the comment period deadline and many excellent comments from people tired of government neglecting to act in the best interest of the citizenry and failing to protect our shared ecosystem.

We submitted the petition and comments, along with this formal comment , to the Canadian General Standards Board (CGSB) for their review. The review process can take a while – it took 9 months for the CGSB to get the second draft out after the first round of public comments. However, we will be tracking the process and we will let you know the results and any next steps we may need to take if the final standards still don’t measure up.

Thanks for standing up for the integrity of the organic label, and against the unsustainable practice of net-cage salmon farming!

Update: Salmon Aquaculture Dialogues

As you may have heard, the Salmon Aquaculture Dialogue (SAD) is a science-based forum initiated by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to engage NGOs and the world’s largest aquaculture companies in setting international standards for salmon farming. CAAR has been engaged in this multi-stakeholder dialogue to try to ensure that whatever standards are developed are as rigorous as they could be, considering the wide range of interests represented in the dialogue (from industry to social justice to environmental protection).

The second draft of the farmed salmon standard has now undergone its second public comment period. As you can see by CAAR’s comments, we believe the latest draft is still falling significantly short on a number of fronts. Now, the SAD Steering Committee will review the public input, including CAAR’s critique, and the standard will undergo further revisions.

Now nearing the end of the process, the standard will either reach a place where it can secure the consensus support of all Steering Committee members (industry and non-governmental organizations), or it will not. The CAAR member groups will keep our supporters updated as events unfold.