They grow to full size in as little time as normal salmon. Im going to have more on what this all means for traditional fisherman in a moment. You should know that some of the nations biggest and best known Food Retailers are already saying no thanks to genetically salmon. They include groger and target whole foods and cosko and thats one sign that gmos have as much to do with money and fear as it does scientific evidence. Most major scientific groups say gmos are safe. But most americans dont buy that. A Food Research survey say the major thought g much o foods are unsafe. You wonder how many, of the 80 of the food contains contains genetically modified ingredients. Most Consumers Want to know if the food theyre buying contains gmo. The labels now contain that they do not have them. Thats a voluntary Martin Omalley made by companies trying to inform consumers and or cash in on anti gmo sentiment. On the other Side Companies that products include gmos do not have an obligation to disclose that. Thats because fda says such products are not different from their nonengineered counterparts. That brings me back to frankenfish and consumers who fear there is something fishy about it. The Companies Wont have to disclose that its genes have been engineered. That is one issue raised by the first genetically altered animal heading our way. Reporter these fish are as fresh and wild as you will find in any shop. King salmon caught off the coast of a larks ska. There could be competition in the future. I think in the Pacific Northwest where ground zero salmon company, we would have a hard time selling such fish to the public. Reporter aqua bowdy technologies has been working on this concept for 20 years, using the fish farms. The Company Claims its man made sterile modified salmon grow to maturity twice as fast as normal maybe in the coscos, the Big Box Retail organizations there may be a place for that. You have to address feeding everybody that has a price point reporter this center for veterinry medicines, analysis has been made of aqua advantaged salmon and determined they have met the requirements for approval. Including that food from the fish is safe to eat. Genetically modified products have been parliament of our food chain for years, mostly in the form of grains and vegetableables. This salmon is the first product approved by the fda but theres no regulation for this salmon to be labelled as genetically modified. If theyre planning to compete with these, theyre set to be up against gmo. It could be a battle too. I think its bad news. I think its just another way to cheat Mother Nature for higher profit, big money im not an organic guy, but i dont like gmos. Im not sure. I probably, if i was offered some, i would try it. Reporter the Company Expects it will be several years before their fish with a tweaked dna will make it to market now correspondent allon from seattle. How do you explain the response from retailers . Are they bowing to consumer fear or maintain the Profit Margins that they have on the higher priced nongmo sam monday . Reporter i think its a combination of both. You will notice that some of those retailers are saying were making this decision nor now. They might not rule it out in the future, but theres a certain amount of pressure from the public and environmental groups to put a stop to gmos on the market and to demand labelling et cetera. Weve seen labelling requirement initiatives go gown to oregan and washington. Reat a tailers are saying theyre not going to do this and they will all reexamine their position later if they can make a few bucks as retailers always do. Is there any evidence that farmed fish bring down salmon. It is an expensive fish. Do we have any sense that prices are coming down as a result of this . Reporter i have no idea about the impact on the price, but i can tell you that if all the atlantic asalmon eaten in this country, 95 of them are farm raised and imported from the big markets, chile scotland, finland. People have been eating farm raised Atlantic Salmon in large numbers for a long time. We will see. A fish that can grow in 18 months instead of three years can be brought to market cheaper and faster, you would assume that thats going to have a price print thats going to be attractive to people selling the fish and buying them. Lunching towards a lurching to the future, we might not have the choice of having line caught or farm raised or nonraised salmon. We might end up being thank for the fish we think the fish come from the supermarket. You probably have a better tie to nature. The gmo debate out there, or across this country where people say just tell me, let me know whether these are gmo or not. Whats the push back against that . People are concerned. There may be a growing concern, but so far there hasnt been an absolute demand that these things be labelled. In the case of the socalled franken fish the company is not required to label them, but they are sending out guidelines saying it can be done voluntarily if the Company Wants to do it or they franchise out the process to others and theyre the ones who are bringing them to market. They could voluntarily eau label them as such and there are guidelines that are being released for that. There will be a Public Comment taken by the fda and a lot of anti gmo folks will get in touch with them thank you for that. Coming up commercial fishermen in california say franken fish could escape their tank and could breed with normal fish. The only Live National news show at 11 00 eastern. We start with breaking news. Lets take a closer look. Talking tonight about genetically engineered food and talking about frankenfish. It is as safe or as safe as regular salmon. The fda saying the company producing the salmon can only raise the animals in land based tanks in canada and panama. They say they wont be able to bretey in the unlikely even that they escape breed. Among the groups not satisfied with the fda assurances is the california based golden gate salmon association. It is a coalition of companies that rely on wild salmon. The group says genetically engineered salmon poses a threat to wild salmon and 91. 4 billion dollar salmon engineer. John mcmanus joins me. Thank you so much for being with us. It took 20 years of looking at this for the fda to finally previous genetically modified salmon. Why could it pose a problem . So far it hasnt been gone. In addition it appears that if these fish eventually make it to market, consumers wont even know that these are genetically engineered fish because theres no labelling requirement. A bigger concern on our part is everywhere that weve seen salmon farmed, whether its norway or chile or canada or washington state, there have been escapees. The government has made a finding that there will likely be escapees with these fish as well what do you think the fda would find if granted your to do a full Environmental Review . If they were to escape into the wild, they could potentially reproduce in the wild and that would pose a threat to wild salmon explain that threat. What would happen to wild salmon if these genetically engineered salmon got into the wild i would like to explain it, but it hasnt been studied. Were asking for that. What i can suggest is because these fish would be so big and so hungry, theyve got basically a growth hormone that is switched to shall permanent lip on. They gobble everything in sight and what they want to gobble would be the same food that would be needed by local wild salmon. Just for starters explain that to me. Youre talking about what kind of food . Youre arguing that its less efficient to feed these salmon than the way normal salmon grow . And herron, small forage fish. We expect these frankenfish would go out there and do the same thing and leave little food for the wild salmon. Just for starters, they might also return to fresh water system like all salmon do to lay their eggs. They might occupy all the spawning areas. We dont know. Were asking the federal government to do an Environmental Impact statement and take a look at some of these problems the argument for those in favor of it is that growing salmon at a fasterer rate, they grow faster, will help more people, possibly bring the price down. Anything in there that you like . Crammed them together in a Lab Environment and basically produced a fish that you would never see in the wild. I dont think that the average consumer actually wants to each such a thing and at a bare minimum i think they ought to be notified if these things make it to market i see the point, that people should be able to choose, but we dont know that people wont eat things. You should see the stuff i eat its a good point. I would also make the point that with all farmed salmon it takes a whole lot of forage fish to produce the food whereas wild salmon are more efficient. If you want to feed the masses, lets talk about going out and sustainably harvesting our saal man and herron stocks and use that as human food. Its far more efficient than taking vast volumes of forged fish out of the ocean, reducing it to fish farm food and distribute willing to the salmon one of the things you pointed out is that youre faking exception taking exception with farmed salmon. This is one bring too far for you. You represent an organization that of people who fish wild salmon on the pacific. None of this works for you. This is more bad than normal farmed salmon. It is, and its also basically starting down a slippery slope of genetically modified animals. In saal man happens to be the first that has now been approved for human consumption. I wouldnt want to eat the thing, and were out fishing off california and other coasts, were producing lots of wild salmon that are great food and we feel like the consumer probably would prefer to have that if theyre given the choice theyre never not going to be given the choice. They can always choose wild salmon over farmed salmon over genetically modified salmon, assuming they get to know. I can tell farm salmon from wild salmon and i cant tell except for the price. You know wild salmon is a premium product and people buy it as they like it. Necessity like it for a reason. It tastes better too. I would say they like it for a reason. Some of our salmon stocks, you can bring them to market very close to the price of some of the farmed finish. So theres a lot of good Product Available and, again, if this stuff is labelled, which we think it should be. The consumer can make their own choice, but i dont want to understate the fact that we see the ge saal man monday as a potential threat salmon. If they get into the wild, it would be bad news for wild salmon. These things are many times larger. Its like going the wild salmon going up against giants that are competing in the same part of the eco system these are going to be farmed in canada and panama. By the time they get here theyre dead. I think that what we know right now is theyve been approved for production in canada and in panama. We dont know where theyre going to go after that. My understanding is that in the data and documents that the company has presented to the federal government, they have considered a fish that is 100 grams about 6 inches long. This is not the fish going to market theyre growing somewhere. Youre saying they will come to the u. S. And potentially growing them here . Is probably to sell them to salmon farms in parts of the world where they can get away with it. I mean, chile is one place where they farm lots and lots of these fish and they have huge environmental problems down there. We dont want to find out if they will start. Everywhere, again in the world where weve seen salmon farming, we have seen escapees. Their net pens are out in the waters. They have failed in every country i hear your scenario. It is a better movie than it is a news report. The fact is theyre saying theres are going to be sterile salmon. I you say the process is not universal but you would have to have an escapee finish to get out there to cause damage to wild stocks. Thats fair. Its not our studies that say 5 . Up to 5 would remain able to reproduce. Thats data submitted to the federal government thanks very much for sharing the discussion with me. It is an important one. We will get a chance to talk about why consumers dont get to know how their food is made and the labelling issue. The executive director of golden gate. Thats coming up. Welcome to al jazeera america. More reporters, more stories, more perspective. From our awardwinning news teams across america and beyond. Weve got global news covered. For years the blood of babies born in california has been collected and scened for genetic disorders. They can be sold to companies to use for research. That has some critics concerned about privacy. Science and technology jake ward has the story. Reporter has any parpt as any parent can tell you the birth of a child is terrible pain and anxiety and lots of medical forms. When my kids were born, we were asked to sign a form that will allow the state to do Genetic Screening using a blood sample. It made a lot of sense when we looked at it. The form allows the state of california to take a pin prick of blood, au blot it and use it to screen for more than 30 potential afflictions. Its also become possible in the last decade to use that blood to sequence a babys dna revealing all the Genetic Information for a doctor or scientist to see. That is stored here in richard richmond. Your database offers the information of maybe a few thousand people at most. This place has the information of pretty much everyone born in california since 1983. That is millions of peoples information. Those samples are available to more than parents and state health on workers. Every state has a Screening Program like this. They make these available to private companies whi. The department of Public Health did not respond for a request. They are deidentified and passed along to kilometres as anonymous data. It is so unique that it is possible to use online information to crassreference them and identify individuals. The resale practice is so alarming to some that a state assembly man introduced a bill requiring written consent from parents for indefinite tore age. It failed to pass. It is an incredible resource. Reporter dr michael sc hrngs neider has used the california database to investigate childhood disease. All of us have diseases that run in our family and by sequencing peoples dna we hope to predict that. You need data from a lot of people to understand that. Reporter he says my kids stand to benefit more from being part of the database than being otherwise these people when they of diseases, the parents dont care about privacy. They want to solve their child, find out whats wrong with them and possibly it will lead to a treatment reporter the Program Allows me as a parent to have my kids data destroyed, but researchers are hoping i wont do that because the code of our bodies can help bring more healthy children into the world now, jake. Are privacy advocates going too far . Clearly this is being put to some good. Is there a really chance its going to be connected to a person . Reporter were sort of living in a time where we have not seen anyone do anything nefariousdna information. You could reverse identify d. N. A. And link it to individuals just by using on line information. They took five anonymous donors of dna. They came you were 45 names connected to those samples. There are ways to reverse identify people. What purpose would somebody put that to . Would there be a practice to discriminate or would would your dating life go out the window. There has been done a project in which was genetic samples taken from a database and experiment entirely on the genes of twins, which is valuable. Not just a couple of them. Ten thousand or more twins. The balance here is really not clear yet it does seem surprising that california is selling this data to do what the scientist did. Its one thing to be allowed for research. Does the selling of the data make it another matter . Partners. They point out that you can have your information destroyed later. That is a new and very grey area. Thats said, a lot of scientific break throughs come from privacy companies. Were talking about drug research, research that is accelerated very, very quickly by access to Genetic Information and reselling that to private companies. Its a very grey area. It may have scientific value, but maybe not thanks for that. That is our show for today. Im vim. Thank you for joining alley very well im ali velshi. Were here to fully get into the nuances of everything thats going on, not just in this country, but around the world. Getting the news from the people who are affected. People need to demand reform. Ali velshi on target. The threat from terrorism is real but we will overcome it. President obama addressing the nation saying the threat from terrorism has now entered a new phase but critics say he offered no new plans to combat it. Connecting the plans in San Bernardino and the colleagues return to work today as they comb b the home of a friend suspected of supplying the couple with weapons. Reporter miami beach launching investigation as officers shoot and kill a bank robber armed with a straight razor. Found no cancer. The former president says after months of president he is cancer free