GM salmon producer AquaBounty on Monday criticized a measure inserted into the proposed $1.37 trillion (€1.22 trillion) US spending bill by Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski to require labeling of GM salmon.
In a statement, the company said that while it has always supported clear, transparent labeling of its bioengineered salmon, it believes Murkowski's rider to the bill "is completely unnecessary."
"Senator Murkowski continues to single out a small, innovative American company in a misguided attempt to protect a parochial special interest when, in reality, the rider most benefits Chilean and Norwegian companies that currently export more Atlantic salmon to the United States than any American company produces," AquaBounty said.
The company also said it will continue to work with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) on compliance for the "vague new language" set by Murkowski.
In April, the FDA lifted a 2016 import alert that prevented AquaBounty's AquAdvantage genetically engineered salmon or salmon eggs from entering the United States, paving the way for the product to be raised in the United States and sold to US consumers.
In 2017, the FDA approved an application by AquaBounty Technologies to raise its AquAdvantage Salmon at a land-based facility near Albany, Indiana.
In 2015, the FDA approved a New Animal Drug Application (NADA) related to its AquAdvantage Salmon, but this approval specified that only AquaBounty’s facility on Prince Edward Island, Canada, where the salmon eggs are produced, and the company’s grow-out facility in Panama, where fish hatch from the eggs and grow to maturity, could be used for producing AquAdvantage Salmon.
