AquaBounty acquires first US fish farm to raise fast-growing GE salmon

Spawning Atlantic Salmon

When salmon from AquaBounty Technologies reach grocery stores and restaurants, some of them will come from America’s heartland.

AquaBounty has agreed to pay $14 million in cash to acquire some of the assets of Bell Fish Company, including that company’s fish farm in Albany, IN. The deal will give Maynard, MA-based AquaBounty its first U.S. fish farm.

AquaBounty has developed a way to grow salmon faster by adding a growth hormone gene from Chinook salmon to Atlantic salmon. The Chinook gene enables Atlantic salmon to reach market weight faster. The company calls its genetically engineered salmon AquAdvantage. In 2015, the FDA approved the AquaBounty salmon for sale in the U.S., concluding that the fish is as safe to eat as conventional Atlantic salmon. Last year, Canada’s health regulator approved the salmon for the Canadian market.

In its first quarter financial report, AquaBounty said it expects that its first sales from fish grown at [a Panama fish farm] will come in late 2017….

AquaBounty expects that its first harvest of salmon from the Indiana site will come by the third quarter of 2019. The company says that when it is fully operational, the facility’s annual capacity will be about 1,200 metric tons of salmon, which AquaBounty says represents more than $10 million a year in potential sales at current Atlantic salmon prices.

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: AquaBounty Lines Up First U.S. Fish Farm With Deal for Indiana Site

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