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WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Food and Drug Administration staffers have determined that a biotechnology firm's genetically modified salmon is safe to eat, boosting chances that the agency will approve the fish for commercial sale.
AquaBounty Technologies, Inc. of Waltham, Mass. has spent roughly 15 years developing its AquAdvantage Atlantic salmon, which include a growth hormone gene that enables them to grow to market size in half the time of conventional salmon.
If regulators sign off on the fast-growing fish, it would be the first genetically modified animal product to be approved for human consumption. The FDA's Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee is slated to hold public meetings on the issue Sept. 19, 20 and 21.
The modified salmon "is as safe as food from conventional Atlantic salmon," FDA staff said in a key document released Friday that only fuels the controversy over whether the altered fish should be added to the U.S. food supply. The analysis is sure to be a point of contention when an FDA panel holds public meetings on the AquAdvantage application later this month. A coalition of consumer, fishing and environmental groups has already criticized the FDA analysis, calling it a scant, insufficient safety review.
The information "is simply too little, too late," said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director for the Center for Food Safety. "FDA's fundamentally flawed process flies directly in the face of President Obama's executive order for openness and transparency in government."
The coalition, which includes such groups as Food and Water Watch and Friends of the Earth, said the sample sizes used in the study are much too small to provide adequate health and safety data. Groups also voiced concern about the modified fish escaping into the wild.
Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) has asked the FDA to slow down its review process and delay its planned hearings by at least 30 days.
"Given the magnitude of the decision and its unprecedented nature, I request that you extend the currently very limited time the pubic will have to review the environmental, food safety or efficacy data and provide the agency comment," he wrote in a Sept. 3 letter to FDA Principal Deputy Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein.
Still, AquaBounty says its modified salmon is based on two decades of research and the salmon eggs are biologically the same as other Atlantic salmon. The company also says that there's unlikely to be any major impact on wild fish because the AquAdvantage fish will be contained. Also, they will all be females that cannot reproduce.
The AquAdvantage salmon are "highly unlikely" to cause any significant effects on the environment, the company said in its own environmental report submitted to the FDA.

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It's as though the American food market is designed to make people as unhealthy as possible and the drug market is designed to provide a pill for each glitch the foods create. .

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