Two months after it declared a genetically engineered salmon safe to eat, the Food and Drug Administration has banned its import.<\/p>\n
On Friday, the FDA announced that as a result of a provision inserted into the federal budget bill passed by Congress, imports of genetically engineered salmon or engineered salmon products are banned until the FDA determines how to label them in the marketplace.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a huge step in our fight against \u2018Frankenfish,\u2019\u201d wrote Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, in a Friday email. Murkowski, who has fiercely promoted a labeling requirement for engineered salmon, inserted the language into the spending bill.<\/p>\n
\u201cI adamantly oppose the FDA\u2019s misguided decision to allow GE salmon to be placed in our kitchens and on our tables, and I firmly believe that mandatory labeling guidelines must be put in place as soon as possible so consumers know what it is they are purchasing,\u201d she wrote. \u201cIt seems that the FDA has begun to listen, and I hope this is a sign that the agency plans to develop these necessary guidelines.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is not clear how long it will take the FDA to develop labeling guidelines.<\/p>\n
The importation ban is particularly important because of the economic case that AquaBounty, manufacturer of the AquAdvantage salmon, has laid out. AquaBounty\u2019s operations plan calls for the engineered salmon to be raised in Canada and Panama, then imported to the United States.<\/p>\n
AquaBounty CEO Ronald Stotish, in a statement Friday, downplayed the importance of the FDA ban, saying it \u201chas no impact on AquaBounty\u2019s operations as we are not currently importing our salmon into the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
Salmon marketing experts at November\u2019s Pacific Marine Expo in Seattle said they expected it would take at least one year \u2014 and likely more \u2014 before engineered salmon reached store shelves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two months after it declared a genetically engineered salmon safe to eat, the Food and Drug Administration has banned its import. On Friday, the FDA announced that as a result of a provision inserted into the federal budget bill passed by Congress, imports of genetically engineered salmon or engineered salmon products<\/a> are banned until the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-2812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2812"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=2812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}