Campaigners fear GM fish will open floodgates to future horrors

By ANDREW GUMBEL

LOS ANGELES - A glow-in-the-dark fish sounds like something that would go down a treat at a birthday party for 5-year-olds. It is also the latest faultline in the ideological battle over genetically modified organisms.

A fluorescent zebra fish, known by its trademarked name GloFish, has been on sale in the United States since the beginning of the year and - thanks to Finding Nemo and the resultant drain on Nemo-like clownfish stocks - has enjoyed robust sales.

GloFish genetically modified with jellyfish glow green, while those mixed with coral genes have a reddish hue when exposed to black or fluorescent light. At US$5 a pop, they are more than five times as expensive as non-glowing zebra fish. What makes them politically contentious, however, is the fact that they are the world's first genetically engineered species to be made commercially available.

According to the company creating and marketing them, a Texas biotech firm called Yorktown Technologies, GloFish are perfectly safe, and the US Government's Food and Drug Administration agrees.

But campaigners concerned about the unknown effects of GM-animals on food safety, the environment and future reproduction say the GloFish is a test case and that if it is not subject to effective regulation it could open the floodgates to all manner of genetic horrors in the future.

Nowhere has the battle been more keenly joined than in California, where the state Fish and Game Commission decided in December to ban the sale or import of GloFish, following in the footsteps of Japan and Singapore.

However, last month the commission voted to take another look at the GloFish question. Commissioner Jim Kellogg admitted that no one had lobbied him harder than his wife Lynn, who owns a 272-litre aquarium and loves brightly coloured fish.

GloFish were originally developed at the National University in Singapore in an experiment designed to detect water pollution.

The idea was that the zebra fish would glow in the presence of toxins such as heavy metals.

It was Yorktown Technologies that spotted their potential as pets. The FDA raised no objection, arguing that since the GloFish were not destined to enter the human food chain they were harmless. Yorktown is careful on its website to point out that GloFish are not intended for any other use except as aquarium pets.

The Centre for Food Safety and others argue that there is no way of knowing what might happen to the fish once they are sold. They could reproduce with non-GM fish or otherwise propagate in unintended ways.

And GloFish are just the start. Among the GM experiments that could soon turn into commercial propositions are pigs with less stinky excretions, cats with non-allergenic fur, hens that produce anti-carcinogenic eggs and goats whose milk never goes off.

- INDEPENDENT