Preparing for the Exam

Answers to questions about the article Franken Fish

How Genetically Engineered Salmon Could Hurt our Health and Environment

Knowledge

1. Genetic engineering is a method by that you manipulate the genes in an organism to get a specific trait. That trait could either be for growing faster, out stand diseases, etc. This is done for economic advantages and for trying to solve world problems.
2. According to Aqua Bounty, The GE salmon is a technological solution for reducing fishing pressure on wild salmon, creating jobs and reducing the carbon footprint of producing seafood.

Comprehension

1.  If 5% of the GE salmon is fertile, when escaping to the oceans, they can reproduce, even if little and slowly, and be of great danger to the native fishes.
2.  “These gaps in the safety assessment for GE salmon are crucially important because a single GE-salmon escape event — involving only a few fish — can decimate wild populations.” – Paragraph 20
3. The GE food products out competes the ordinarily food production. It, with its genetically modified genes, grows faster and have better, in a quantitative way, circulation than the ordinarily products.
4.  The article is about how genetic engineered salmon should or should not enter our world and what consequences it would have on other life elements.

Application

1. I think that the idea of GE salmon is good; we want to increase our food supply for more people to take a part of but at the same time, at what price? I do not want to eat genetically modified food even if it is safe at the moment. We do not know what will happen in a couple of years, what the consequences are and what consequences other living organisms on this planet will take.
2.  Question: How will the human body react on modified food in the future, is it safe for our health to eat modified food?Reason: I would ask this question due to the fact that we do not yet know what will happen, we can’t go forward in the future and see what is happening to later go back and change it. What if modified food is a danger to our health?

Analysis

1. The problems that might be by relaying on this study from Aqua Bounty are that it is not that qualitative with information. It gives you information but not all information that applies to you and the information that is important to you are scarce. For you to take a stand, you need all the information to choose between what you think and think not. This takes more information to think about.
2. The main reason why we shouldn't grow GE salmon is due to its “better” traits, it has bigger advantage over other fishes. If the GE salmon escapes, the consequences of this could be that it, due to its advantages, can out compete and drive other fishes to extinction. It due to its size and growth eats much more than other fishes and will with that eat other fishes food source. I also think that growing fish on a fish farm is on ethical. Fish do not primarily exist for our entertainment or as our food supply. They are a living organism too and not an object to our science department. We shouldn't experiment and release something that we do not know of.
3. The worst case scenario for the environment would be the best case scenario for Aqua Bounty due to the fact that if non-modified fish gets out compete and is on their way to extinction the pressure for GE salmon would increase. People want to eat salmon and if the regular choices of the fish vanish they will find another choice. And in this case, the GE salmon which is a salmon, though modified.
4. If Aqua Bounty does not get approved by the FDA, they will probably go bankrupt due to the fact that their business does not go well.
5. The implications for genetically engineered food is that we are creating a substitute to the ordinarily food and at the same time leaving a stable and knowing business for a new and uncertain one. We are at the same time testing the new technology and watching how Far we can go with it. We also jeopardize the environments resources and the ecology. What will happen when we are letting modified productions enter the world market and the world’s environment?

Synthesis

1. The action you would do to stop the GE salmon from entering the real world (oceans) is to have really good containers and to work with it extremely carefully. You would have to experiment with the safety and have several escaping levels so it could not, under any circumstances, be able to escape into the real world and do harm.
2. The best method for spreading information is to acknowledge it in papers and on the news. It is from the news where people get the most knowledge of what is happening in the world. Informing people that there are problems with genetically engineered products, not only salmon, allow them to take a stand and decide what choices and actions they will take, if they support genetic engineered products or if they are against products that are modified , primarily, for economic purposes.

Evaluation

1. We shouldn't give Aqua Bounty approval due to the fact that if the GE salmon would escape this may cause extinction to not only other native salmons (by competition over resources) but also other smaller native fishes because of the GE salmons eating habits.
2. The global fish market would also suffer when there would not be any wild fish left and if the GE salmon would escape this would also cause environmental instability. Over one billion people are depending on fish as a food supply, it would be devastating if the balance of fish would be disturbed.
3. One other consequence of letting the GE salmon into the wildlife is that it can spread diseases and once again the native fish stability would be jeopardized.