GENETICALLY ENGINEERED FISH STIR CONTROVERSY
Aug 24th 1999
FORTUNE, Prince Edward Island The big trout in the green tank are
voracious eaters, their pink mouths wide open with anticipation as they
swarm beneath their automatic feeding tray. Every time the tray drops new
food pellets, the water becomes a mad splash of writhing fish.

Who can blame them for being hungry? They are growing boys and girls,
genetically programmed to grow about eight times faster than normal during
the first year of their lives. Compared to the skinny, ordinary trout swimming
in the next tank, these 18-inch fish are giants among Lilliputians.

This is ground zero in what supporters are calling ``the blue revolution''
that could soon sweep the fishing industry and the world's dinner plates. By
inserting extra genes into fish, the would-be revolutionaries hope to conquer
the last wild frontier in the food supply, creating fish that grow faster, live in
colder waters, and even fight off disease better than the ones Mother Nature
produces.

Already, the Massachusetts-based company that owns this hatchery,
A/F Protein, is gearing up for large-scale production of fast-growing trout
and Atlantic salmon. Worldwide, researchers have found the genetic keys to
rapid growth in at least 11 commercially valuable fish species, including
shrimp growing at the University of Connecticut.

But, before the first genetically altered smoked salmon hit the market,
the fledgling industry is caught in the rising controvery over genetic tinkering
with the food supply. Critics warn that the lab-created fish could escape and
damage wild fish stocks, while consumers worry that genetically altered food
of all kinds may not be healthy or tasty.

``We need to move aquaculture into a better direction than it has right
now,'' said Boyce Thorne-Miller of SeaWeb, a Washington-based
advocacy group that criticizes aquaculture for polluting coastal waters with
concentrated fish feces. Genetic engineering, she fears, ``could make things
worse.''

Representatives of the new industry say the fears are misplaced,
promising that their fish will be as wholesome as conventional fish, just more
abundant. They also plan precautions to prevent genetically altered fish from
upsetting the balance of nature, such as neutering the fish.

``We are very concerned about the amount of misinformation and
emotional reactions that are not based on science,'' said Elliot Entis, chief
executive of A/F Protein, whose corporate headquarters is in Waltham.
``Our position is that our fish are basically unchanged in all respects from the
wild fish. What we have done is really a juggling of the genes.''

Still, controversy over genetically modified food, including attacks on
crops in Europe, is taking a toll. New England salmon farmers, growers of
the region's third most valuable seafood, have shown little interest in
genetically altered salmon, fearing that they, too, could be drawn into the
backlash.

``Without knowing a lot more about it, I think the consuming public
would have difficulties with a genetically engineered salmon,'' said Michael
Hastings, director of the Maine Aquaculture Innovations Center, an industry
research group.

Marking a milestone



Without question, the advent of genetically altered fish marks a milestone
in the history of food. Nearly every other food group, from meat to
vegetables to fruit, has been cross-bred almost beyond recognition after
millennia of human agriculture. Fish, by contrast, are mostly harvested from
the wild, shaped only by the forces of evolution.

But a rising human population has decimated the world's fishing grounds,
increasing pressure to more intensively manage the fishing industry. Japan
tried in the 1980s to create genetically superior ``superfish,'' including a tuna
that researchers hoped might swim to the net when it is ready for market.

However, the quest for the superfish proved more difficult and time
consuming than many had hoped, both because genetics is so complex and
because species such as salmon take years to reach sexual maturity. Today,
although nearly 20 percent of the world's fish and shellfish come from
aquaculture, none, with the possible exception of fish sold in mainland China,
have been genetically altered.

Now, inside a modest fish hatchery between the lobster boats and
potato fields of rural Prince Edward Island, the West may be closer than
ever to a commercially available superfish. A/F Protein officials hope to test
their fish in ocean pens next summer and, if they win US and Canadian
regulatory approval, begin selling genetically altered salmon and trout by
2001.

Ironically, the researchers who started A/F Protein were not trying to
make fish grow when they began in the mid-1970s. They were trying to
understand how flounder survive in frigid Canadian waters that would kill
salmon; but, it turned out that the same gene that allows flounder to survive
the cold could be combined with a second gene to speed growth as well.

Hoping to boost growth by 20 to 30 percent, Garth Fletcher, a fish
biologist at Memorial University of Newfoundland, and Choy Hew of the
University of Toronto injected the salmon embryo with a gene that promotes
antifreeze production along with a gene for making salmon growth hormone.
Together, the genes programmed the salmon to produce growth hormone
continuously, and to produce it in two organs rather than the normal one.

To the researchers' surprise, the salmon grew 400 to 600 percent faster
during their first 14 months. The combination also worked on other fish,
including rainbow trout that grew 8 to 10 times faster than normal in their
first year.

And, although these fish needed more oxygen and food than ordinary
fish, they were big enough to go to market up to a year earlier as well.

``It strikes me as fantastic. The growth rates and the cost of production
of the genetically modified fish are in no way comparable to regular fish,''
said Sefton Dixon, a Prince Edward Island salmon farmer who recently
formed a company called OvaTech with five other fish farmers to distribute
A/F Protein's genetically modified fish as soon as they are available.

The Canadian government has backed genetic engineering of fish as
well, funding the research, and sending government officials to public events
such as taste tests designed to show that genetically altered fish taste fine.

But Canadian enthusiasm has not been matched on the US side of the
border, where aquaculture companies face more scrutiny and criticism in
part because more people live on the coast. Although Entis of A/F Protein
spoke to Maine salmon growers in 1995, fish farmers have been reluctant to
commit to a technology that could bring them unwanted publicity.

``None of my farmers have told me that they want me to put out a
request for proposals on engineered salmon. They've got a lot of other
problems that are a lot higher priority,'' said Hastings of the Maine
Aquaculture Innovations Center.

Flood of critics



Meanwhile, genetic engineering of fish faces a steady stream of criticism
ranging from groups such as Greenpeace that oppose it to developing
nations that fear the technology will help the industrialized world at the
expense of the poor.

Rebecca Goldburg of the Environmental Defense Fund, for instance, has
warned that genetically altered fish could be so tough that they out-compete
wild fish for limited food and spawning areas. Alternately, the fish could
interbreed with wild fish, changing their genetic makeup in unpredictable
ways.

Several observers fear that the new fish could cause allergic reactions or
other unexpected side effects for consumers that regulators such as the US
Food and Drug Administration could easily miss.

But A/F Protein hatchery manager Arnie Sutterlin, over a breakfast of
genetically engineered smoked salmon, said people will soon learn they have
nothing to fear. ``I cannot tell the difference and I've eaten literally 20
pounds of the stuff,'' he said. ``They're just like other fish. They just grow up
faster.''

Neither US nor Canadian regulators have raised concerns about the
safety of the new fish so far. Canadian government-funded studies of the
genetically altered salmon have found that they appear, swim, and behave
like ordinary salmon, except that they eat and breathe a lot more.

Still, A/F Protein officials are trying to ease public edginess by promising
to label genetically altered products and using only fish genes in their
research rather than the mouse and bacteria genes that some have used. In
addition, they expect the FDA to insist on conditions to prevent the fish from
escaping, such as enclosed tanks or fish that cannot reproduce.

Unfortunately, no one can guarantee that these protections will work.
Fish farmers are unlikely to support expensive indoor tanks instead of the
ocean nets they use now, Sutterlin said, and the pressure treatment to neuter
salmon sometimes produces defects such as deformed jaws or poor ocean
survival.

Even if A/F Protein's fish can be grown safely, critics conclude, this is
the start of a whole new field that has attracted research institutes from
Baltimore's Christopher Columbus Center to the University of Connecticut's
Biotechnology Research Program. As the number and type of genetic
manipulations increase, they say risks could multiply.

But A/F Protein officials are counting on public doubts to fade over time,
much as apprehension about eating salmon raised on fish farms did in the
1980s. Then, genetic engineering of fish could become just one more
unnoticed tool for managing the human food supply.

``The average consumer has no idea where their food comes from,'' said
Sutterlin. ``The chicken comes from the jungle fowl of Asia. It's got the
texture of manila rope. All of the food we eat has been manipulated'' over
the centuries. Soon, he hopes, we'll add fish to the list.

New York Times Syndicate