FDA Proposes Approval Process for Genetically Engineered Animals

Source: LA Times

The Food and Drug Administration today opened the way for a bevy of genetically engineered salmon, cows and other animals to leap from the laboratory to the marketplace, unveiling an approval process that would treat the modified creatures like drugs.

The guidelines for the first time make explicit the regulatory hoops companies would have to jump through to sell salmon that grow twice as fast as wild fish, pigs with high levels of healthy omega-3 fatty acids in their meat or goats that produce beneficial proteins in their milk.
...

Many experts, however, fear that the proposed regulations do not go far enough to protect and reassure the public. In particular, they argue that the approval process would be highly secretive to protect the commercial interests of the companies involved and that the new rules do not place sufficient weight on the environmental impact of what many consider to be Frankenstein animals.
...

Others are more nutritious or grow faster, improving the diet and enhancing farmers' profits. Some would serve as sources for organs for human transplants, expanding the small pool of donor organs now available. Others, called biopharm animals, would be used to produce drugs such as insulin, which are now manufactured in yeast or bacteria.



Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-genetic19-2008sep19,0,4097901.story

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No where in the text of the story (at least the Times version) does the word "patent" come up. This is almost fucked up enough to make me find religion.

what a stoopid mistake this is to mess with our food production. I'm going to grow what I can.

:eyes:

"an approval process that would treat the modified creatures like drugs." this is unbelievable.

Let's not, and say we didn't.

:hide:

eventually.

& it's going to happen, unless something drastic happens to reverse it.

Sometimes I think, 'if Ted K could only have waited for the internet, instead of blowing people up ...'