Greenpeace protests seafood show

Group criticizes production of gene-altered fish

David L. Chandler / Boston Globe 28mar01

To their developers and advocates, they could be a way to increase food production and help feed the world's burgeoning population. To critics, they represent a dangerous new technology that threatens to destabilize and possibly decimate natural fish populations.

Yesterday, the quiet but increasingly intense debate over genetically engineered fish came to Boston as the environmental group Greenpeace brought its protest to the International Seafood Show at the Hynes Convention Center. The group's large, motorized billboard circled the block.

''From an environmental point of view, even a single fertile female that gets out ... could have evolutionary significance,'' said Doreen Stabinsky, a science adviser for Greenpeace. She warned that genetically engineered fish could interbreed with wild fish such as the endangered Atlantic salmon and threaten the whole species.

Earlier in the day, outside the convention center, the group unfurled a 6,000-square-foot banner protesting genetically modified fish being raised at a Prince Edward Island hatchery.

The fast-growing genetically altered salmon and other fish are being developed by a Waltham-based company called Aqua Bounty Farms, which also runs the breeding facility on Prince Edward Island. The company hopes to obtain approval soon from the US Food and Drug Administration to begin selling the fish.

The altered fish contain a growth-enhancing gene from another fish species, and the company hopes to begin selling it to fish-farming operations in the United States and elsewhere.

''The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that aquaculture will have to increase sevenfold in the next 30 years,'' to provide the world's growing population with the same amount of seafood it gets now, said Elliot Entis, president of Aqua Bounty, during a trade show panel discussion on the new fish. The genetically modified fish species ''provide a benefit that would allow us to feed the world,'' he said.

But critics, including ecologist Rebecca Goldburg of Environmental Defense, who also spoke at yesterday's panel, say that it would be reckless to approve such ''transgenic'' animals, which could potentially escape into the ocean, without much more intensive research on the potential dangers.

''Fish containing a new growth hormone gene might displace wild fish if they outcompete the natives for food or spawning sites, since the transgenic fish would be larger and grow faster than wild fish at a given age,'' according to Goldburg. And, she added, ''aquaculture facilities are not escape proof - sometimes large numbers of fish are accidentally released.''

Such releases have become so common, she said, that it is no longer unusual for fishing vessels to catch Atlantic salmon in the Pacific Northwest. A single accident last year caused 300,000 fish to escape from one Washington state salmon farm, she said.

Richard Gutting, president of the National Fisheries Institute, said yesterday that he believes the potential is great, and that it would be ''irresponsible not to invest in this technology and see whether or not we can enhance the food supply of the world.''

Entis said that there should be no risk in the case of the salmon his company has developed, because they will produce only sterile females. These could not breed with wild fish even in the event of an accidental release, he said. ''Some of these organizations are antiscience,'' he said, referring to a call by Greenpeace to halt all research on such transgenic fish. The research should continue, he said, to allow the safety concerns to be answered.

But Greenpeace spokesman Craig Culp counters that the scientists themselves have spoken: The American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, the group that represents scientists who specialize in fish, last year issued a resolution calling for a ''moratorium on creation or marketing of transgenic salmonids'' until it can be proved that there is no danger of a release into the environment, and saying that such fish would be neither safe nor effective to combat world hunger. Entis countered that the statement was passed last year without being ''carefully considered,'' and said he has spoken with ''lots of scientists and environmentalists who have weighed in on the other side.''