We can build whatever animal you want to eat, say scientists

news.com.au ^

[Scythian]

TINKER with the genetics of salmon and maybe you create a revolutionary new food source that could help the environment and feed the hungry.

Or maybe you're creating what some say is an untested "frankenfish" that could cause unknown allergic reactions and the eventual decimation of the wild salmon population.

The US Food and Drug Administration hears both arguments this week when it begins a two-day meeting on whether to approve the marketing of the genetically engineered fish, which would be the first such animal approved for human consumption.

The agency has already said the salmon, which grows twice as fast as conventional salmon, is as safe to eat as the traditional variety.

Approval of the salmon would open the door for a variety of other genetically engineered animals, including an environmentally friendly pig that is being developed in Canada or cattle that are resistant to mad cow disease.

[Smokin' Joe]

Perhaps based on lifetime feeding studies with lab animals.

Hey that'll work. When are they going to start?

[Smokin' Joe]

Yeah, I thought about that, too. (8^D)

[the invisib1e hand]

This is useful. It could make cheap seafood and meat easily available to every person in the world eventually. Farming of genetically modified salmon would also mean an end to overfishing of wild salmon.

ummm...unhmm....so what? Is cheap seafood somekind of birthright? Most nations have more beaches than we do, and fishing traditions that go back millenia. And, what, we need "create" salmon for them?

You know what? The world has its head up its ass, that what. The "educated" world, that is.

[Smokin' Joe]

I just drove through Montana on Highway 2 and US 94. Montana has never looked so lush and green in the middle of July. Every section of land seemed to be growing nicely with wheat.

Like North Dakota, Eastern Montana highways follow paths of least resistance--the smoothest track. We've had a lot of rain this year, the grass is green six weeks after it usually turns borwn.

There are vast areas of North Dakota and Montana north of the interstate which are too rocky (glacial moraine) or too steep (badlands topography), or are otherwise unsuitable for farming wheat, but make good grazing land.

Vast BLM owned tracts are grazed as well, but farming is out.

If the land will make a good living for those farming it, it is generally being farmed unless the government has put the skids to that.

Corn, BTW, is a relatively uncommon crop here. Between wind loads and water requirements, it doesn't generally do well outside the river bottoms.

[the invisib1e hand]

May not sound tastey to you; but to a guy starving in Africa - I’m sure it’s better than Rock Soup.

I'm sorry chum, my tolerance for specious arguments is less than zero today.

If there's a guy starving in Africa, it's most like because of some shenanigans his government is playing, not because he can't grow food.

And so if you're implying that somehow an engineered salmon, patented by a corporation and regulated by government is going to solve his problem, I strongly suggest that you are on the wrong website. And in the wrong universe.

[KoRn]

[Smokin' Joe]

...they've been genetically modified by us using artificial selection through all of man's recorded history.

It is one thing to work with enhancing existing traits through interbreeding, another to create new traits in a lab. The natural combinations will work or not, but there may be unintended and undesireable consequences of direct genetic manipulation.

[Sawdring]

My mother-in-law lives in Havre and it is usually brown by July, but not this year. She voted for Obama and claims it is Global Warming that has brought the “monsoons.”

[Vigilanteman]

See also Hodar’s post #35. Part of the problem was that you drove on I-94 and US 2. These are, even by Montana standards, excellent roads. They also have nearly parallel railroads which drastically lower the cost of shipping grains. Try going up into the nethermost regions Missouri Breaks or isolated little towns where the roads are poor and there are no railroads. Growing grain in these areas, while it might be possible, is seldom profitable. Yes, a rancher may grow enough grain to help his cattle through the winter, but many of the few towns you see won’t even have grain elevators. Why do you suppose that is?

[Carry_Okie]

I'm not even going to touch that title.

No way.

[Slings and Arrows]

[Hot Tabasco]

I don’t like salmon! Now, if they tinkered with a potato chip and made one that didn’t end up all broken at the bottom of the bag I’d be interested.

[Smokin' Joe]

It isn't a question of raising an existing species (taken from the wild) under controlled and optimized conditions.

It isn't even a question of selectively breeding those species to have a new breed suited to aquaculture.

It is a question of creating new traits which do not exist in nature, and the consequences of those organisms getting into the wild, should that happen.

Any organism which grows twice as fast will require both growth hormones and food. Release this super-eater into the wild and the effects on those other critters (prey) in the food chain and those other organisms (other predators) who depend upon them might be a disaster.

That said, I would want the 'engineered' food clearly labelled so I would have the option of not buying it, instead of put on the market as if it were identical to the wild or even aquacultured natural fish.

[Vigilanteman]

So why does you mother-in-law want to trade off the “moonsoons” which are making Montana green this year for the usual scrub-grass and dryland wheat which produces the usual brown by July? I would think global warming would be of great benefit to a place like Havre, Montana.

[Sawdring]

I was commenting on how lush the Northern half of Montana has been for the last year or two. I understand how arid and inhospitable it usually is.

[wastedyears]

I wonder if they could create a Spiderpig.

[Smokin' Joe]

It's a thirty year weather cycle. We're back to 1980 or so.

I hope your MIL gets better....

[Scythian]

The massive Asian Carp problem in the midwest is due to flooding of fish farms thanks to Katrina, now they have gone all the way up the Mississippie, Wabash, and other rivers and finally into the Great Lakes, all species, eventually break free one way or another ...

[Sawdring]

She doesn’t. She just deserves free this and free that and watches too much CNN.

[CholeraJoe]

In Europe, mussels are farm-raised in fjords within enclosed areas. I’ve seen them being harvested in Ireland.