It sounds like a science-fiction scenario: engineer a fish with a gene for growth hormones to accelerate maturation and create a giant “super fish.” Freakish as it may seem, for more than a decade, corporations and researchers in the U.S. and abroad have engineered human and other foreign growth genes into salmon, trout, and numerous other fish species in an attempt to make “super fish.” Their incentive, of course, is to create a more profitable fish by taking a commercially viable fish, genetically engineering it to grow bigger faster, thereby bringing more seafood to the market in less time.
Lured by lucrative corporate profits, the research and development of genetically engineered seafood has increased in recent years. As of 2005, corporations and researchers worldwide are cobbling together at least thirty-five varieties of transgenic fish—fauna containing genes from foreign organisms.1 Thanks to the legal and grassroots efforts of environmental and consumer groups, gene-altered seafood remains out of our supermarkets. But one company, Massachusetts- based Aqua Bounty Farms, continuously pressures the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to allow its engineered salmon, which can grow up to seven times faster than normal, in meat cases around the nation.
While corporations continue to engineer fish and push for their commercial use, scientific evidence mounts regarding the extraordinary environmental dangers these fish pose. Several recent studies suggest that the release of these fish into open waters could be catastrophic. In 1999, a study by William Muir and Richard Howard of Purdue University revealed that these super fish could wipe out local, wild populations of a species.4
Muir and Howard discovered that fast growing genetically engineered fish have a reproductive advantage over wild fish. It turns out that fish prefer super fish when mating. But there’s a catch. Because of the unnatural growth genes passed down to them, the offspring of these fish have a high and early mortality rate: genetically engineered fish are three times more likely to die prematurely than wild fish. The growth gene that gives super fish them reproductive advantage spreads through the native population quickly, and soon, native fish populations could dwindle and eventually become extinct.
“You have the very strange situation where the least-fit individual in the population [the genetically modified fish] is getting all the matings—this is the reverse of Darwin’s model,” said Professor Muir. “Sexual selection drives the gene into the population and the
reduced viability drives the population to extinction.” 5 The researchers found that if sixty genetically engineered fish joined a wild population of 60,000 fish, this population would vanish within forty generations. Subsequent research has shown that extinction could occur even quicker. Even one transgenic fish could have the same devastating impact, though extinction would take longer.
The two Purdue researchers have dubbed this extinction scenario the Trojan Gene Effect. “This resembles the Trojan Horse,” according to Professor Muir. “It [the growth gene] gets into the population looking like something good and it ends up destroying the population.”6
As corporations and researchers multiply the numbers of these super fish, there is increasing concern that the destructive potential of the Trojan Gene Effect will be realized. Wild salmon are exceptionally vulnerable to this blight. Even the release of a few of the genetically
engineered salmon pending commercial approval could obliterate Atlantic salmon, a species already threatened. A genetically altered salmon, intentionally or accidentally introduced into the wild, could not be recalled, found, and destroyed. Instead, it would survive, mate, and contaminate a native population with its growth gene. The 114 varieties of endangered fish, including populations of Chinook, Coho, and Sockeye salmon, are especially at risk from the proliferation of transgenic fish. Should a Trojan gene make its way into any one of these vulnerable populations, extinction could result.
And extinction is forever.
Excerpt from Your Right to Know: Genetic Engineering and the Secret Changes in Your Food by Andrew Kimbrell. Your Right to Know provides a comprehensive and up-to-the-minute guide on the very real dangers genetically engineered foods present to our health, the environment, and farm communities. This book provides you with all the necessary tools to understand this critical food issue, to choose to avoid GE foods and to become an active participant in the fight for an organic, environmentally sustainable and socially just food future. It also contains a pull-out "Pocket Shopper's Guide to GE Foods" that lists what products to buy in order to avoid GE ingredients. Books can be ordered at www.earthawareeditions.com or www.centerforfoodsafety.org.
