holding public hearings on genetically engineered salmon. scientists say the salmon is safe to eat, but critics are calling it frankenfish. joining us now, elizabeth cohen. she s the author of the empowered patient. elizabeth, what is different about this salmon as opposed to all the ordinary salmon we ve always been eating? wolf, this salmon grows much faster. here s the issue. regular salmon, the kind we eat all the time, they only have growth hormone in their bodies during the warm weather months, so that means they don t have growth hormones when it s colder. so here s what scientists did. it s pretty interesting. they went to another fish called an ocean pout, which does have growth hormones in its body all year round, they took that gene, that growth hormone green from the ocean pout and they put it into the salmon. so now the salmon instead of taking 30 months to reach
probably why the name is unfamiliar. what they do, these ocean pout, they have growth hormone all year-round. they take dna and put it into the salmon. the salmon only have growth hormone usually for a couple of months a year. so, in other words, by taking a gene from a fish that has growth hormone all year putting that in the salmon, the salmon grow faster. the company that makes it says that is the only difference is that these salmon mature faster. they look and taste and everything else like a regular old salmon. so have they studied exactly what happens when humans eat this genetically modified fish. they haven t done really major studies where they feed people this fish and see what happens. so no, the answer is no. the company says look, why should we need to do that. these are exactly like salmon except for this difference in this one gene. there is a coalition of groups of nutritionists and consumer
when you go into the store you don t knowed soy beans are genetically modified. now there s a movement afoot genetically altered salmon could get this on your dinner plate. aqua bounty, what they want to do is combine the sha nook salmon because it has some sort of, i don t know, important growth hormone with something called an ocean pout. that s like pouty lips. yeah, the ocean pout, a fish, and the chinook salmon and make a uber fish and grow to its size in 18 months as opposed to three years. look at that, it s called transgenic salmon and thinking about doing it in terms of a trout and talapia.