© Aqua Bounty Farms

Led by US public interest group the Center for Food Safety (Washington, DC), more than 60 consumer and environmental groups, along with fishing companies and fishermen, filed a petition to the US FDA on May 9 requesting “a moratorium on the domestic marketing, importation, and exportation of transgenic fish. . .until the FDA establishes a comprehensive framework. . .to fully address the human health and environmental impacts caused by the commercialization of transgenic fish.” There are currently about 40 transgenic fish being developed worldwide, but the focus has been on transgenic Atlantic salmon developed by A/F Protein (Waltham, MA) that reach commercial size in half the time as wild type, but need only about 80% of the food to do so (Nat. Biotechnol. 18, 143, 2000). The salmon is currently under review as a drug by the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine, which collaborates closely with other federal and state agencies particularly on environmental matters. “They're demanding a moratorium and that the FDA has to first approve [transgenic fish] before they're allowed into the system, and that's exactly what [the FDA is] doing anyway,” asserts Elliot Entis of A/F. “Where's the beef?”