A quick note in treehugger news— a coworker said something about genetically engineered salmon this morning, and I just looked it up. Sure enough, the FDA is holding hearings on both the permissibility of and potential labeling for genetically engineered salmon.
I went looking for some more and found this:
Unlike ordinary salmon, AquaBounty’s genetically modified fish grows during the winter as well as the summer, so it reaches an 8-pound market weight in 18 months instead of 36. That’s accomplished by inserting part of a gene from an eel-like creature called the ocean pout into the growth gene of a Chinook salmon, then injecting the blended genetic material into the fertilized eggs of a North Atlantic salmon.
Here’s an ocean pout for reference.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coho-salmon-farming