Genetically Altered Salmon coming soon

The Food and Drug Administration is seriously considering whether to approve the first genetically engineered animal that people would eat — salmon that can grow at twice the normal rate.


The developer of the salmon has been trying to get approval for a decade. But the company now seems to have submitted most or all of the data the F.D.A. needs to analyze whether the salmon are safe to eat, nutritionally equivalent to other salmon and safe for the environment, according to government and biotechnology industry officials. A public meeting to discuss the salmon may be held as early as this fall.

The salmon was developed by a company called AquaBounty Technologies and would be raised in fish farms. It is an Atlantic salmon that contains a growth hormone gene from a Chinook salmon as well as a genetic on-switch from the ocean pout, a distant relative of the salmon.

Normally, salmon do not make growth hormone in cold weather. But the pout’s on-switch keeps production of the hormone going year round. The result is salmon that can grow to market size in 16 to 18 months instead of three years, though the company says the modified salmon will not end up any bigger than a conventional fish.

“There is no opportunity for anyone from the outside to see the data or criticize it,” said Margaret Mellon, director of the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. When consumer groups were invited to discuss biotechnology policy with top F.D.A. officials last month, Ms. Mellon said she warned the officials that approval of the salmon would generate “a firestorm of negative response.”

Mr. Stotish said the salmon would be grown only in inland tanks or other contained facilities, not in ocean pens where they might escape into the wild. And the fish would all be female and sterile, making it impossible for them to mate.

MORE

Read more...

Beef ate chicken Feces

A recent investigation into industrialized agriculture feeding practices has revealed some disturbing information of which many may not be aware. Commercial animal husbandry practices often involve feeding livestock mass amounts of animal waste, including chicken litter, which contains chicken feces, bedding, feathers, and other unknown residue.

Long before the days of industrialized agriculture, leftover table scraps and produce unfit to be sold were the type of waste products farmers fed to cows and other livestock, in addition to the grasses and other natural food they already ate. The waste of old was edible, nutritious and suitable for animals.


Chicken litter works great as a soil fertilizer because it adds nitrogen, nutrients and other organic matter to soil. It has long been common practice to recycle it on nearby land.

However, today's massive chicken factories produce a glut of litter that these factory farms do not know what to do with. Their solution has been to sell it to cattle feedlots, where cows consume up to two million tons of it every year.

Chicken litter is not the only disgusting waste product being fed to cows that millions of Americans end up eating as beef. Feedlot operators are also feeding leftover waste products from corn-ethanol production. Such byproducts contain antibiotic residues and are implicated in prompting the proliferation of the E. coli virus.

Read more...