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DCL
European fisherman currently makeup $107 billion of the world's fish market and they're non-too-pleased with the U.S. Frankenfish salmon threat, according to Reuters.
"We don't have any monster pigs in Europe, or monster cows, and there's no need for such a salmon," said Geir Isaksen, the chief executive at big Norwegian fish farmer Cermaq.
The fish in question is a farm-raised salmon modified so that it can eat year round and fatten up faster. According to Ars Technica:
These genetically modified Atlantic salmon have two foreign DNA sequences inserted into their genomes. One encodes a growth hormone from Chinook salmon. The other is the on-switch used by an antifreeze gene from ocean pout, an eel-like fish found in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean. When placed alongside the growth hormone, this on-switch makes the salmon produce the growth hormone in cold weather when they otherwise wouldn't. Importantly, the GM salmon do not grow larger than regular salmon; they just achieve their size in sixteen to eighteen months rather than three years.
And if passed by the FDA it will not be labeled as genetically modified. In Europe all products containing more than .9 percent GMO are labeled as such. But in the US, there is no such standard. We would like to believe that our foods come from nature, but that's far from the case.
According to the story:
In an online Washington Post poll last autumn, 58 percent of respondents said they would not eat GM salmon. A European Commission survey at the same time found that 77 percent of Europeans opposed GM food of any kind.
This poll shows that a large percentage of Americans are also skeptical about these monster salmon especially if we wouldn't be able to choose to avoid it.
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