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Jul 30, 2019

In a first-of-its-kind endeavor, AquaBounty farms country's bio-engineered salmon in Indiana

Ten miles north of Muncie, a new 40-acre farm is busy with work — all day and all night. What’s being grown there, though, isn’t what most would likely expect from Hoosier farm country.

Just outside Albany, the gate-restricted, mostly inconspicuous facility owned by AquaBounty Technologies is one of few aquaculture farms in the state. Indoors, thousands of salmon swim within large, 70,000-gallon tanks. They’re eating and growing, being monitored by farm hands and biologists around the clock.

But a new, brimming batch of eggs are different than those already swimming around.

Growing at twice the rate of wild salmon, these are the first genetically-engineered animals deemed safe to eat by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Their existence in Indiana also marks the first time a genetically-modified food animal will be raised and sold in the United States.

The salmon are expected to hit the U.S. market next year, but their consumer success remains to be determined. AquaBounty and the FDA persist that the fish are safe to eat. Scientists say the biotechnology used could help the industry meet growing seafood demands.

Will salmon-lovers bite, too?  Read the article.