Statement by Ronald L. Stotish, Ph.D., President and CEO of AquaBounty Technologies

U.S. Senate Letter to FDA Asking Commissioner Hamburg to Halt Approval Process of AquAdvantage Salmon Ignores 15 Years of Scientific Study by the FDA

WALTHAM, Mass., July 20, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Background: On July 15, 2011, a letter to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Margaret Hamburg signed by eight United States Senators, including Senators Mark Begich (D-AK) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), asked the agency to cease the approval process for AquaBounty Technologies' AquAdvantage Salmon.

The U.S. FDA has conducted a rigorous 15-year review of thousands of pages of data and has concluded that these fish are exactly the same as any other Atlantic salmon and, therefore, are safe for consumption. In addition, the fish will be sterile and required to be grown in self-contained inland tanks, posing no threat to the environment. Finally, the United Nations reports that the wild caught fisheries are severely stressed, with major food species potentially extinct by 2050, yet the demand for fish protein is exploding worldwide. America currently imports more than 97% of the Atlantic salmon consumed here, while a handful of Senators willfully ignore science-based research widely available to the public. Oddly, several of the signers have previously criticized the agency for playing politics with science when the contraceptive Plan B was under review.

Statement:

"We remain confident that the more deliberative body of the Senate will refrain from interfering in the 15-year scientific review by the U.S. FDA. The facts about the safety and the environmental benefits of the fish have been made fully public by the FDA. It would be a dangerous precedent to react to a handful of legislators' misinformed paranoia. The real waste of tax-payer dollars would be to abandon the important American principle of science-based regulation, responding instead to economic protectionist fears or subjective and emotional judgments. This is an issue greater than our application, an issue of American leadership in technology, innovation, and science based regulation."

SOURCE AquaBounty Technologies