My name is Philipp Aerni. I currently work at FAO on a project on payments for environmental services in agriculture. I wish to respond to Message 43.
In 2004, I published a paper on the regulation of transgenic salmon in 2004 ('Risk, regulation and innovation: the case of aquaculture and transgenic fish' in the Journal 'Aquatic Sciences'). In this paper, I argue that the development of transgenic salmon needs to be understood in the historical context. It represents one of the business responses to the challenge of dealing with risk (overfishing), regulation (discouraging unsustainable fish harvesting practices) and innovation (moving from fish catching to fish farming). Transgenic salmon resulted from the need to address environmental and fish health concerns in aquaculture as well as the need to produce more fish with less resources in view of the growing global demand. Disease resistant, fast growing, and sterile fish would allow to make existing aquaculture sites less prone to disease outbreaks, less risky to genetic introgression between bred and wild salmon (escaped sterile fish are normally unable to reproduce) and more productive (slowing down expansion of aquaculture into environmentally sensitive coastal areas). There is no doubt, that there are also risks involved with respect to the release of transgenic salmon, but after 15 years of risk research there is not much evidence that the risks would be any different from the risks that are already known from existing aquaculture practices and fish breeding techniques. In turn, the existing risks in commercial aquaculture, fish breeding and high sea fishing remain real and are likely to increase with increase in global demand for fish. So far, policy makers have failed to address the growing need to produce more healthy and safe fish with less environmental impact. In this context, the case of regulation of transgenic salmon in the United States illustrates how policy makers tend to discourage investment in innovation in fish farming through costly regulation. The general experience in the area of green biotechnology shows, however, that more regulation does not decrease but actually increases public anxiety. Those who benefit most from this trend are the incumbents in the fish industry. They do not feel pressure to innovate because of high barriers to market entry caused by prohibitive regulation. As a consequence, concentration in industry is likely to increase and the usual Schumpeterian life cycle of technological change from a technology as a tool of domination to technology as a tool of empowerment is delayed substantially. This will have a negative impact on the sustainability of fish farming on the long-run.
Dr. Philipp Aerni
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
Natural Resources Management and Environment Department
FAO-NRD, Room B.5L2
Via delle Terme di Caracalla
00153 Rome
Italy
Tel : (+39) 06 5705 3826
Mobile: (+39) 389 253 45 86
E-mail: Philipp.Aerni (at) FAO.org
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