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takyon writes:

The Food and Drug Administration has given its first approval for human consumption of a genetically modified animal. AquAdvantage salmon grow twice as fast and year-round compared to salmon that have already been honed by selective breeding.

A kind of salmon that's been genetically modified so that it grows faster may be on the way to a supermarket near you. The Food and Drug Administration approved the fish on Thursday — a decision that environmental and food-safety groups are vowing to fight.

This new kind of fast-growing salmon was actually created 25 years ago by Massachusetts-based AquaBounty Technologies. A new gene was inserted into fertilized salmon eggs — it boosted production of a fish growth hormone. The result: a fish that grows twice as fast as its conventional, farm-raised counterpart.

AquaBounty has been trying to get government approval to sell its fish ever since. Five years ago, the FDA's scientific advisers concluded that the genetically modified fish, known as AquaAdvantage salmon, is safe to eat and won't harm the environment.

[More after the break.]

Alison Van Eenennaam, a biotechnology specialist at the University of California, Davis, who was part of that scientific evaluation, says it wasn't a hard decision. "Basically, nothing in the data suggested that these fish were in any way unsafe or different to the farm-raised salmon," she says.

The FDA now is giving the salmon a green light. In a statement, the agency said that the data indicated "that food from the GE salmon is safe to eat by humans and animals" and "that the genetic engineering is safe for the fish." It's the first genetically modified animal approved for human consumption.

[...] AquaBounty will only be allowed to raise the modified fish in tanks, on land, at just two sites — one in Canada and one in Panama. And the company says its fish will be sterile, so if they escape, they will fail to reproduce. But those precautions aren't enough for the fish's opponents. "This frankenfish, this GMO salmon, should not be approved, and shouldn't have been approved," says Dana Perls, a campaigner with the environmental group Friends of the Earth.

Aside from opposition by groups like Friends of the Earth (FOE) and Consumer Reports, the article also notes polls showing that only 25-35% of respondents say they would eat genetically modified fish. Would these consumers actually read product labels in an attempt to avoid eating GMO fish? We may not find out, because FOE says that over 60 grocery chains, including Safeway, Kroger, Target, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and Aldi, have promised not to sell AquAdvantage salmon.

We previously noted on the double-muscled pigs story that no regulator worldwide had approved a GMO for human consumption. That changes now.

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