Genetically engineered salmon could signal the future of agriculture and food

On Wednesday we reported on the controversy around the Food and Drug Administration's decision to approve genetically engineered salmon for human consumption. The salmon, engineered to grow twice as fast as normal salmon, would be the first genetically engineered animal to reach the dinner plate but could be just the first step in changing the face of U.S. food and agriculture, Seth Borenstein and Malcolm Ritter of The Associated Press report. Among the other projects being evaluated in labs and on experimental farms are vaccines grown in bananas and other plants, "enviropigs" with less polluting manure and cows that don't release methane.

"To the biotech world, precise tinkering with the genes in plants and animals is a proven way to reduce disease, protect from insects and increase the food supply to curb world hunger," Borenstein and Ritter write. "To skeptics, genetic changes put the natural world and the food supply at risk. Modified organisms can escape into the wild or mingle with native species, potentially changing them, with unknown effects." Over the last 15 years genetically engineered plants have accounted for more than 2 billion acres of crops in over 20 countries.

Traditional breeding has been compared to using a sledgehammer, while genetic engineers say their process is more like using a scalpel. "All of the animals, plants and microbes we use in our food system, our agricultural system, are genetically modified in one way or another," Bruce Chassy of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign told AP. "That, or they're wild." Martina Newell McGloughlin, director of the University of California's Biotechnology Research and Education Program, added, "Genetic engineering is more precise and predictable, yet it is regulated up the wazoo. Yet there is no regulation at all on the traditional breeding system." (Read more)