Eat To Live Fishy business

[Aaron5125]

It's hard to know whom to believe when it comes to genetic modification. Along with the publication this week of two contradictory reports on the success of GM crops Snowjoggers, the news suggests those of us who would like to keep our food as close to nature as possible should pay attention to farmed fish.
Friends of the Earth published a report this week claiming consumer rejection of genetically modified crops and the technical challenges in developing new products could marginalize them. The environmental group doubted the biotech industry's claims that it had succeeded in reducing hunger in the Third World, saying that overwhelmingly, GM crops are grown in rich nations or exported to them.
The International Service for the Acquisition of Agribiotech Applications would disagree. In its own report also released this week Dr. Clive James, its author and chairman and founder of ISAAA, said four new countries and 250 UGG Knightsbridge,000 more farmers planted biotech crops in 2005.
Even in the GM-resistant EU Moncler Men's Jackets, biotech crop growers Spain and Germany were joined this year for the first time by the Czech Republic planting Bt maize Cardy Ugg Stivali, along with France and Portugal, following a five-year moratorium.
"Resource-poor farmers in developing countries Ugg Sundance Grab Handbag," James maintained in an ISAAA press release, "account for 90 percent of the 8.5 million growers who benefit from biotechnology, while developing nations represent more than one-third of 2005 global biotech area."
The EU, though, is made up of 25 nations. And this week the European Food Safety Authority revamped its recommendations on the monitoring of genetically modified organisms in foodstuffs to guard against risk of unexpected health and environmental problems after crops have been authorized.
It doesn't sound as if it feels quite as cocky about genetic modification as the ISAAA.
If you're not too bothered about the risks involved with inert biotech maize and soybeans, take a look at living fish.
Next month, for the first time in New Brunswick, Canada, around 10,000 farmed cod will be harvested from cages in the Bay of Fundy. So far, cod farming is a venture limited to few areas around the world.
Nell Halse of Cooke Aquaculture told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, "It's just the beginning of a very important complementary industry to salmon farming."
Funnily enough, that was also in the news this week.
Aqua Bounty Technologies of Waltham, Mass., is hoping the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will approve its quick-growing farmed fish.
The company has developed a breed of salmon that contains part of the genetic code of the ocean pout, which, according to Business Week, makes it grow twice as fast as normal farmed salmon.
So far the FDA has not approved any transgenic animal for human consumption. But who knows in the future.
Speedy growth salmon will double a salmon farmer's output while cutting his costs 35 percent per fish. Terrific for his bottom line.
Personally I wouldn't touch the farmed salmon we've already got with a bargepole. Not only is it alarmingly fatty, but I'm not confident in what it has absorbed during the farming process.
There are those coloring agents that turn farmed salmon from its innate, and unsalable, gray into the glowing coral that sends it leaping into your shopping cart. There are the toxic chemicals used to control sea lice that attack farmed salmon and become embedded in the food chain.
Then there's the fact that farmed salmon takes more protein out of the food chain that it can deliver. It gets much of this from fishmeal. This in turn comes from wild fish trawled from the deep. So stocks of these are diminishing.
All in order to bring you a cheap dinner. For how long?
Is all this coming to a cod near you? Whatever happened to the idea that nations should fiercely regulate and police fishing practices in their own and international waters so that we can continue to support and eat wild fish?
Ask your fishmonger the provenance of what you are buying. If you're satisfied it is safe both for your family and the oceans, cook it as simply as possible, lightly greased with a little olive oil or butter either broiled each side till its flesh moves easily under your finger or in a 400 F oven at 8 minutes per inch of thickness.
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