Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
Genetically engineered fish, anyone?
Would you eat a genetically modified fish? What about pork from a pig with mouse genes? Beef from cattle with genes spliced to resist “mad cow” disease?
These are questions Americans may soon have to answer for themselves if the U.S. health regulators allow the sale of a genetically engineered salmon. The company that makes it, Aqua Bounty Technologies Inc <ABTX.L>, expects an agency decision by year’s end.
The biotech says its Atlantic salmon grows nearly twice as fast as normal salmon and could help Americans get more locally farmed fish. That could cut down on U.S. imports of roughly $1.4 billion a year in Atlantic salmon from other countries such as Chile while also easing pressure on wild Atlantic salmon in the nation’s Northeast.
But environmentalists and consumer advocates are concerned about what could happen if such altered fish were to escape or be released in rivers or off-shore salmon farms. They also worry about the health effects of eating such modified fish.
The Food and Drug Administration takes up the issue starting Sept. 19 as part of a three-day public hearing on whether to allow the genetically altered salmon on the U.S. market.
For more on the salmon situation, click here. For other genetically engineered food animals that aren’t far behind, click here.
Photo credit: Reuters/Victor Ruiz Caballero (Workers process farmed salmon at a plant in Chile. The fish shown in the photo are not genetically modified.)
Who is responsible for cleaning up our oceans?
– David Rockefeller, Jr. is a philanthropist and CEO of Around the Americas and Chairman of Sailors for the Sea. Any views expressed here are his own. –
When the Ocean Watch set sail from Seattle last May at the launch of our Around the Americas expedition, our greatest challenge was to make Americans start thinking about health of oceans. For too long, we have been taking our rich seafood supplies and scenic seascapes for granted.
One year and 28,000 miles later, and now with the massive BP oil spill, much has changed.
While I’d love to say that our expedition is responsible for finally turning around the slow drip of public concern for ocean health into a steady flow, I am fairly certain that the continuous flow of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico is, unfortunately, driving home what the captain and crew of Ocean Watch have been saying all along.
The fact that our oceans are not too big for one person to damage is becoming clearer with each passing day. In just one month, we have witnessed the largest oil spill in the history of the U.S., with the full repercussions yet to be seen.
We know our Gulf seafood supply of shrimp, oysters and blue crab will likely be damaged for generations to come, to say nothing of the sea turtles, sea birds and other wildlife that are already suffering.
Hi, you have shared a great information that is very important for our Environment. We should be aware of this and request to our Govt. to do something so that we can save oceans.
Conserving Water
Could seaweed stop offshore drilling accidents?
–Dr. Gunter Pauli, PhD, MBA, is an entrepreneur and founder of the ZERI Foundation (Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives). He is the author of 17 books and 36 children’s fables. His latest book The Blue Economy contains one innovation outlined in this article. —
One wonders if the oil industry will ever learn.
When in the summer of 2006 holes in pipelines forced British Petroleum to shut down a major part of its network in Alaska, oil prices shot up to record levels.
The analysis of the problem unveiled that microbial induced corrosion (MIC) contributed to a dramatic domino effect.
Microbes are known to cause corrosion. Concentrated and purified metals are easy energy sources for bacteria, which consider this as their equivalent of fast food. After the insurance paid most of the environmental clean-up costs, and consumers footed the bill for a huge premium on the market, the industry reverted to improve a model that has proven to fail.
Why does a $1 billion clean-up bill not force the oil sector to embrace a portfolio of fundamental shifts in thinking and doing? It seems an obvious opportunity to launch an aggressive search for an out-of-the-box solution and dedicate the relevant budgets that build on new modus operandi, already well founded in science.
Finally someone who doesn’t only critisizes, but comes with solutions as well. He is the kind of positive mind we need in these times! I’m really looking forward to reading his book The Blue Economy, wondering about all the other nature inspired solutions Prof. Pauli is proposing.
Video: Jean-Michel Cousteau weighs in
Jean-Michel Cousteau, environmentalist, documentary producer and the son of ocean explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau, urges a moratorium on offshore oil drilling as a result of the catastrophic oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.
In this video blog on the Ocean Futures Society website, he points to the spill and ongoing leak as fuel for the argument to embrace renewable energy and end dependence on fossil fuels as our primary energy source.
Cousteau has produced over 70 films, including the documentary series Ocean Adventures in 2006.
