GE Salmon: Consumers Need to Weigh in Now!

The race is over. The fight is on. FDA announced last week that they will hold public hearings on the approval of genetically engineered (GE) salmon for consumers’ tables. If they approve GE salmon, it would be the first transgenic animal approved for human consumption in the U.S. The hearings will take place September 19, 20 and 21, which doesn’t leave much time to pose critical questions. Even though many consumers express concern over health and environmental risks that might be associated with GE salmon, FDA is trying to quickly approve it. In response to this important consumer issue, Food & Water Watch will host a series of blogs dedicated to this topic, and we will break down each concern we have with every posting. We have been closely following this process and we are working with a coalition of organizations to contest GE salmon, as well as inform the public about why the FDA should discontinue its approval process of AquaBounty’s AquaAdvantage® GE salmon. We hope you tune in frequently for updates on this very important issue. We welcome your comments, so please feel free to share them with our community. Stay tuned! -Rich Bindell

In various beef trade publications, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) has recently decided to launch an attack on the mission of Food & Water Watch. We find this to be a curious development and we decided to figure out why.

Residents of Citrus County, Florida did it right: They questioned a process BEFORE it was put in place. In this case, the process was moving the county’s public utilities toward privatization. Thanks to the Citrus County Council — a grass-roots consortium of civic clubs, homeowners associations and environmental groups — residents were well informed about what privatization would mean for Citrus County, and they told their commissioners to reject privatizing their public utilities.