Gene-Altered Salmon for Everyone

Well, that was predictable. Almost as soon as the Food and Drug Administration last week approved production of genetically modified salmon, the scaremongering about "Frankenfish" and the threats of litigation began.

Some of the groups vowing to file lawsuits to prevent the salmon from ever reaching consumers -- the Center for Food Safety, for example, and the Nova Scotia-based Ecology Action Centre -- usually emphasize their devotion to scientific evidence on issues such as climate change. In this case, the evidence, after almost 20 years of study and research, shows that salmon with genes altered to speed growth aren't in any significant way different from wild or standard farm-raised salmon.