Sharing The Bounty.

We created this space for a simple reason: To say loud and clear that our bioengineered farm-raised salmon is safe, healthy, affordable, delicious, and environmentally responsible. Thankfully, our customers, employees, regulators, assorted stakeholders, and an increasing number of consumers already know this. But some other folks have been misled by a small, but determined, assortment of activists and incumbents who are misguided at best, and often outright dishonest. Whether because they fear innovation and new technology, or because they’re trying to insulate themselves from competition, they’ve used every tactic they can think of to prevent us from feeding people our fish.

But our integrity and sense of purpose as a company compels us to push back against the distortions and untruths, and to stick up for our products. And that’s just what we intend to do here, whether that means correcting erroneous statements in the public record or highlighting attempts by anti-aquaculture activists to unduly influence our ability to do business.

When we created AquaBounty nearly 30 years ago, many wild Atlantic salmon habitats had already disappeared and others were in danger. Catch numbers had been dwindling for decades and in some fisheries were near catastrophic collapse. Conservationists and scientists were sounding the alarm over the broader trend of overfishing, and there were legitimate worries that a variety of seafood stocks would be gone within a generation. In the U.S., consumption of fast food and processed food was peaking, while seafood consumption was stagnant and well below official dietary guidelines. At the same time, American agriculture and domestic food production was at the tail end of decades of disruption and displacement, and manufacturing jobs were disappearing across the country.

Land-based aquaculture of fish like Atlantic salmon provided a means, however modest, of countering all of these worrying trends. It could make seafood more affordable and widely available to inland communities, take pressure off our oceans and wild fish populations, create good jobs, bolster global competitiveness in an innovative sector, and protect supply chains from external shocks.

But ocean-pen farmers using conventional Atlantic salmon had to invest significant time in getting fish from egg to market sized—about 30 to 36 months. That’s where AquaBounty came in. By using salmon with a gene that enables them to grow faster and use 25 percent less feed to reach market size in land-based farms, we found a way to make better, more efficient use of natural resources without sacrificing safety, quality, or price.

Our salmon was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for production and sale in the U.S. in 2015, after an unprecedented period of scientific study, environmental review, and public comment that took nearly 20 years to complete. In addition, Health Canada approved consumption of AquaBounty’s genetically engineered salmon in 2016.    It’s safe to say that few products have ever faced such scrutiny from so many experts before getting to market.

As part of that 2015 review, the FDA environmental risk assessment concluded that our farming protocols would have no negative impact on the environment or on endangered species. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) agreed with this assessment. We expressly designed our fish to provide critical protein and nutrients in an environmentally responsible way, taking pressure off wild populations and the oceans that sustain them.  

Ironically, some the same ideological activists who currently oppose our business once advocated land-based aquaculture for this very reason, criticizing ocean-based farms for pollution and seabed degradation, as well as for their potential to contaminate or decimate wild fish populations. But now that our farms are actually solving the problems they raised, and with fish that gets to market affordably and without wasting natural resources, some of these same people have moved the goal posts to the other endzone. Now, in defiance of North American regulators and the overwhelming scientific consensus on the safety of our bioengineered salmon, activists have resorted to baseless fearmongering.

These activists have also entered a kind of alliance of convenience with others, including incumbent fishing interests, with whom they have little in common besides their opposition to our salmon. The latter have spearheaded erroneous legal and political attacks directed at our business model and the innovations that make it possible. This isn’t due to environmental worries, despite what some supporters claim. Instead, it’s about trying to use the courts, flawed attempts at public policy, and factually untrue social media campaigns to attempt to regulate us out of existence, rather than have to compete with us fairly.

The truth is that in 25 years of raising them, not one of our salmon has ever made it out of a farm and into the wild. Nor is there any scientific evidence that such an event would harm wild populations even if it were to happen. We adhere to strict regulations that require them to be hatched and raised in land-based systems, with multiple, redundant biological and physical barriers between our farms and distant waterways. We do not, and cannot, raise our fish in ocean net pens or other environments where they might be able to mix with wild populations.  Furthermore, none of our fish are physically able to reproduce with either wild or farmed salmon.

Our land-based farms are designed to protect both the environment and the fish. And while opponents who directly or indirectly rely on wild salmon populations may not appreciate the competition in the short-term, in the long-term our way of doing things will help them, too. That’s because the existence of our salmon helps ensure the long-term viability of salmon in the open seas. And that, in turn, helps ensure the long-term viability of the local communities and economies that rely on them.  

For all these reasons, we’re here to stand up for the facts and call out the distortions. We’re confident that people will see the truth about AquaBounty, that we’ll continue innovating, and that we’ll feed more and more grateful customers in the coming years and decades.