The right to keep dwarf or miniature goats in your backyard is just one of the changes being promised in San Diego’s new urban agriculture ordinance.Photo: robotika

Another resident, Kaya de Barbaro, had to move her chickens around the city after a neighbor complained, eventually hiding them near a canyon, where one of them made a meal for a coyote. Some San Diegans have even tried to exploit loopholes in the municipal code that allow chickens in schools or museums, claiming to the city that their homes are actually schools. (No, it didn’t work.)

While enforcement of the 50-feet law is spotty when neighbors don’t mind, a newly proposed set of urban agriculture rules might just allow residents like Hiner and de Barbaro to keep their animals without breaking the law in the first place. That’s right; San Diego is getting an urban agriculture makeover.

In July, Mayor Jerry Sanders signed an ordinance dramatically streamlining the city’s community garden regulations. In its wake, the city began work on a revision of the city’s commercial and backyard garden laws. If the proposed changes go through, San Diego will begin to allow retail farms (which can sell produce grown in the city), farm stands, and bees. The rules regarding chickens would be revised and the city might even allow miniature goats, among other things.

The ordinance, which will be voted on in January, would also bring San Diego in line with San Francisco, Chicago, Oakland, Seattle, and other U.S. cities that have already made similar changes. And while some aspects of urban agriculture appear to be an easy win for the city, the proposed rules about farm animals are turning out to be both complex and controversial.

It started with community gardens

The impetus for the proposed changes stems from the creation of the New Roots Community Garden, a 2.3-acre, multicultural community garden for refugees from around the world, by the International Rescue Committee (IRC). Now a few years old, the garden has garnered national media coverage (and a visit from First Lady Michelle Obama). After seeing how difficult it was to clear regulatory hurdles for urban farming — it took an astounding $40,000 and nine months — the IRC joined forces with others looking to establish new community gardens in San Diego, such as the People’s Produce Project, and began working to change the laws.

An advocacy group formed calling itself the 1 in 10 Coalition, in reference to their hope that — once the rules changed — one in 10 people in San Diego would be able to get at least some of their food locally. One of the group’s leaders was Parke Troutman, who had written a PhD dissertation on land-use politics in the city and county of San Diego. “[It] was a land-use issue, and only a few of us had experience with that,” he recalls.

Changing the community garden laws was a long, hard slog that took two years, even with several city council members’ support. Toward the end, the effort got a boost from a $16 million obesity-prevention grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that included a school and community garden program led by San Diego County. The money went to fund the creation of five regional gardening education centers throughout the county. The grant also paid for work on policy changes; it paid for Troutman to consult as a “Land Use and Planning Consultant,” allowing him to devote more time to bringing San Diego’s urban agriculture laws into the 21st century.

The community garden effort brought to light a number of other urban agriculture-related issues — such as the need to revisit chicken ownership, farm stands, and beekeeping. So, once the community garden issue was wrapped up in June, San Diego City Council wasted no time; by July, they had brought urban agriculture before the council’s Land Use and Housing Committee.

Home gardeners unite

San Diego City Council Member Todd Gloria has been another key advocate of better, more expansive urban agriculture laws in San Diego. Gloria heard about the IRC’s difficulty in establishing New Roots Community Farm even before he was sworn in to the city council. Then, while holding one of his monthly “Coffee with Your Councilman” events, a young couple approached him, explaining that they had received a code compliance violation for owning chickens. “That drove it home for me,” Gloria said.

But even for an “agvocate” like Gloria, bees were not an easy sell. “I’m afraid of bees,” Gloria admits, but adds: “The beekeepers have helped me understand the issue better.” One argument San Diego beekeepers have made is that they will actually help keep the city’s bees docile, by eliminating aggressive, Africanized traits in their hives. 

As of October, a draft ordinance has been written. If it passes, single family homes will be allowed to keep a few chickens 15 feet from their home (and more with a 50-foot setback). The initial draft allowed one bee hive per home, but beekeepers successfully argued that the city should to raise the number to two, arguing it allows for better maintenance of the hives.

The goat problem

The draft ordinance also initially included an allowance for two miniature goats per home, but San Diego County’s Departments of Environmental Health and Public Health Services have requested that this rule be removed from the ordinance because they fear it could lead to an increase in raw milk consumption.

One of the strongest advocates for backyard goats in San Diego is Laura Hershey, resident and former goat owner. A few years ago, she adopted Hester and Strawberry, two Nigerian dwarf goats, but she lost them once the city found out she had them.

As miniature goats, mature female Nigerian dwarfs weigh 30 to 50 pounds (around half the size of full size goats). Hershey’s goats each provided her with up to a quart and a half of milk a day, which she easily pasteurizes at home using nothing more than a pot, a kitchen timer, and a thermometer. “A third grader could do it,” she said before the city council recently.

Once the city heard opposition from the county Health Department over raw milk fears, goats were briefly pushed off the short-list of priorities. Goats are now back in the proposed law changes, but whether they make it all the way to the mayor’s desk remains to be seen. This resistance to goats is unfortunate for a few reasons. The San Diego draft ordinance is based on a similar law in Seattle and, so far, Seattle has had no foodborne illness as a result of milk from backyard goats, raw or otherwise. Additionally, it is unprecedented to ban ownership of dairy animals for the sole reason of limiting raw milk consumption. In fact, even in parts of the United States where selling raw milk is illegal, farmers and their families may still consume it themselves. Last, consumers are trusted to buy raw meat — even when we know a high percent of it is contaminated — on the assumption that they will cook it thoroughly at home. A family with two Nigerian dwarf goats — the only dairy breed the draft ordinance allows — would produce just enough milk for the family, but not enough to sell.

San Diegans are getting excited as the urban agriculture ordinance works its way through the city’s long and winding government system; a recent meeting drew 150 attendees out in support of the proposed changes. Adam Hiner says he is definitely getting more chickens, and his sister, Rachel, has put her name on a waiting list to buy miniature goats. And there’s a rumor going around that one city council members might even get some chickens.

Scratchy show: Missoula, Montana fought a battle over backyard chickens, chronicled in this funny New West video (source of still, above). The city later caved in and allowed them.Photo: Anne Medley

Uh-oh. I was pretty sure it was NOT legal. And he wasn’t willing to break the law.

We’re not alone. Around the country, chickens are gaining popularity as productive pets, and many cities (like Detroit, Iowa City, and Calgary) don’t allow them. More commonly, they allow chickens only on large properties, making the birds effectively illegal for most residents. Here’s what you can do if yours doesn’t give a flying cluck about poultry.

Don’t ask, don’t shell

Step one, of course, is to figure out whether it is legal. While there are many websites (such as Backyard Chickens and Homegrown Evolution) that list laws around the country, I have found them occasionally to be inaccurate, so I recommend you check your city’s municipal code for yourself. Your city’s code should be available online, either from a link on the city’s website or, if not, by searching on Google for “[your city name] and municipal code.” Once you’ve found the code, there are two different places to check.

First, see if there’s a section called “Animals” or something similar. Often cities choose to outlaw certain animals completely, such as ones that are nuisances (loud peacocks) or dangerous animals (venomous snakes), and those would be listed in this section. If you check here and find that chickens or roosters are not specifically outlawed, that’s good — but you have to keep reading.

Next, check the Zoning section. Typically, each zone will specify which animals are allowed in that zone. It’s this section that will likely tell you whether you can have chickens and, if so, how many. (If you’re having trouble navigating the legalese in your code, but the site offers a search function, search on terms like “chickens,” “poultry,” and “fowl.”)

If chickens aren’t legal in your city, ask around. You might find they’re tolerated by the city, so long as your neighbors don’t complain. If this is the case, check with your neighbors — promise them some eggs! — and just get a small flock (four to six) of illegal chickens.

Start with coop-eration

I began asking my city, La Mesa, Calif., to legalize backyard chickens in late 2009. They quickly put the issue on the city council agenda, and then promptly voted to table the matter.

Every city is different, of course, but there are definitely certain things you will need.

First, line up your allies. The bigger and more vocal the group you can assemble, the better. Think about enlisting community gardening or master gardeners groups in your city — they might want to add chickens to their gardens — environmental groups, animal rights groups, or a senior center.

Second, find out who’s who in your city government. Try to identify a potential champion on your city council who will work on your behalf. (In my own case, our best bet was a member of our city council who teaches at my roommate’s daughter’s elementary school; we know he had ducks as a child.) You can observe some of the dynamics by attending city council meetings, but chances are you can find out more via gossip from the people who regularly attend those meetings. And while it may be the city council and the mayor who will vote on any measures, don’t overlook the city’s senior staff, who research issues and inform the members of the city council about them. Getting a senior staff member on your side can be extremely helpful.

Next, arm yourself with some information: What do other cities’ chicken laws look like? What are the top complaints or worries raised about legalizing chickens? You need to be prepared to respond to those concerns.

You might wish to offer your city council some specific laws as examples, such as the chicken-friendly laws in Seattle or Madison, Wisc., but the most convincing laws will be ones from nearby cities.

Most cities that allow backyard chickens specify how many are OK — usually between three and eight. When deciding how many chickens to ask for, consider that chickens’ egg-laying slows down after their first few years. It’s wise to allow families to keep enough chickens to meet their egg needs after their first batch of layers gets older.

Laws often prohibit roosters, and they sometimes prohibit slaughter. It is very important to emphasize up front to your city council that hens still lay eggs without a rooster. Many people don’t know that!

Typically, laws also require that chickens be kept in a well-maintained coop, i.e., one that doesn’t smell and attract flies. Some laws require that the coop be a certain number of feet from neighboring homes, or that it not be visible from the street. Additionally, some cities require that chicken owners register and pay a small fee to the city.

Why cities should <3 chickens

Make sure to communicate clearly why chickens belong in the city. Here’s a few easy reasons:

• Chickens are fun, friendly pets with educational value for children about where food like eggs comes from
• They can provide food security for poor families
• They lay healthier eggs compared to store-bought eggs
• They give gardeners high-quality fertilizer
• They control flies and other pests, not add to them, and dispose of weeds and kitchen scraps that otherwise might end up in the landfill

Don’t fear the cheeper

Be prepared for people to raise concerns about allowing chickens into your city. Some of the most common concerns are: noise, smell, predators eating the chickens, and chickens turning up in local animal shelters. The first three issues are the easiest to answer:

Noise: If you don’t have roosters, chickens aren’t noisy. Hens cluck and peep softly all day long, and then go to bed at dusk and remain quiet all night.

Smell: A small flock of four or five chickens will poop about as much as an average dog, and their coop won’t smell if it is kept clean. This is where crafting a good chicken law comes into play. If the law only allows chickens in a “well-maintained coop,” then a chicken owner with a messy, filthy, smelly coop is out of compliance and can be cited under the law.

Predators: The sad fact is that chickens are food — not just for humans, but for foxes, coyotes, opossums, raccoons, hawks, and sometimes neighboring dogs. It should be the responsibility of the chicken owner to keep his or her chickens safe from predators — just like it is for cat owners, say — , and there is ample advice available on how to do so. Even though a careless owner may lose chickens to predators, I fail to see how this is a municipal problem, as it is not something that causes a nuisance to anyone except for the chicken owner.

Chickens overwhelming animal shelters: This is a real problem that should
be dealt with carefully. On a farm, the optimal ratio of roosters to hens is about one rooster for every eight to 10 hens, and — since about half of the baby chicks born will be roosters — any excess roosters can be eaten. In a city, where people are less likely to slaughter their pets for dinner, unwanted roosters do end up at shelters. Unless a family gets “sex-link” chickens, which can be sexed at birth with 100 percent accuracy, inevitably some families who thought they were buying hens will get roosters by mistake.

So what do you do when your “hen” begins to crow, if roosters are not allowed in your city? Check with nearby farms to find out if any are willing to take excess roosters (or hens, for that matter, if a family gets hens and decides later they don’t want them). Would a nearby farm accept unwanted chickens? And there are plenty of people who’d be willing to take a rooster off of a family’s hands and make coq au vin (the farmer might, too). Unlike unwanted dogs and cats, who need loving homes, unwanted chickens can be eaten. (Do be aware, of course, that some families will want to find their unwanted roosters homes that won’t eat them, and that your city might not want city residents slaughtering chickens in their backyards!) Bottom line: Let your city government know that sometimes “hens” turn out to be roosters, and put their minds at rest by figuring out ahead of time if any nearby farms would be willing to take them.

My new chicken coop, aka Cluckingham Palace.Photo: Jill RichardsonBirdbrained scheming

Once you’ve lined up your allies, gotten a rough understanding of your city government, and assembled the information above, you’re ready to go. Find out how to get an item on the agenda for a city council meeting and sign up. Then ask anyone and everyone to email or call the members of the city council voicing their support for backyard chickens ahead of the meeting. If they’re willing to attend the meeting and make public comments, even better!

Even a small number of emails will likely make a difference. Let your local newspaper know that the chicken issue is coming before the city council. If they cover the story, ask your allies to follow up by writing letters to the editor within seven days of the story appearing in the paper.

Then, be prepared to wait. Unfortunately, the backyard-chicken issue will likely be much more important to you than it will be to your city council. Even if members support you, they might not want to spend the city’s resources to change the law. In my city, the issue was initially tabled until the next General Plan update (over a year away) with the justification that the city could more fully examine the issue of sustainability, including backyard chickens, at that time.

You’ll need to be persistent, and you might come up against some rather baseless opposition on the grounds that “chickens don’t belong in the city.” Point out that New York City; San Francisco; Seattle; Portland, Ore.; and Vancouver, British Columbia all allow chickens. Offer to take the members of city council to visit a nearby backyard chicken coop. I also email my entire city council and the mayor every time a U.S. city changes its law to allow chickens. (Some of the most recent victories are in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Vancouver, BC; and Knoxville, Tenn.). Meanwhile, in 2010 Seattle increased the number of chickens a family could have from three to eight.

While you’re waiting impatiently, you might want to get your backyard chickens anyway. Consider how likely you think your city is to force you to get rid of your chickens, and whether you are still willing to get your chickens, knowing that it might result in trouble with your city government. Or as a compromise, try asking your city council to allow you to have some chickens as a “pilot program,” promising to get rid of them if they cause any trouble.

Civil disobedience might be the right way to move the issue forward in your city, as legalizing backyard chickens becomes much more pressing a question once several families have backyard flocks in violation of the law. Often, poultry opponents feel much less worried after they actually see backyard chickens, especially if they have a chance to see children interact with the hens, or they taste the eggs.

It’s up to you whether you want to tiptoe around on eggshells wondering if the authorities will make you get rid of your feathered friends — or wait a few years for the law to change. If you do go the civil disobedience route, make sure that you are a model citizen, selecting a docile breed of chickens, keeping your chicken coop clean (and your chickens safe), working to ensure your neighbors’ concerns are addressed, and promptly getting rid of any accidental roosters.

Over the past year, I’ve kept in close touch with members of city council, answering their questions about backyard chickens, but the law remains the same. Some members of the city council seem sympathetic, but the mayor has said flat out that “farm animals” do not belong in a city. Ultimately, although at least one member of the council has promised to work in it, I think the council doesn’t see the issue as important enough to dedicate city resources to changing the law.

Last month I asked my neighbors’ permission, and took the plunge into civil disobedience. Even if my four Buff Orpingtons are strutting around on the wrong side of the law, I hope more plucky eggtivists out there take what I’ve learned and get their cities to legalize backyard birds.

Tipping the scales: The transgenic faster-growing AquAdvantage salmon from AquaBounty.AquaBounty photo

The government recently held three days of meetings about whether to approve the “AquAdvantage” salmon — genetically engineered (GE) to grow faster thanks to genes from the Chinook salmon and from the eel-like ocean pout — for human consumption. As I reported here, the FDA special committee charged with evaluating the safety of the fish seemed likely to rubber-stamp the super-size salmon.

Well, did they? And what’s next?

The New York Times first said the “Panel Leans in Favor of Engineered Salmon” but later walked that back to “Panel Advises More Aggressive FDA Analysis.” The meeting on the third day, which debated whether to label the fish as genetically engineered, ended with “No Agreement Imminent On Salmon Labeling,” concluded the Los Angeles Times. A “rough consensus” was reached by the committee that “if the fish is approved for market, consumers should have a way to avoid it.”

Somewhat surprisingly given its veterinary and pro-industry members, the committee did act more cautiously than anticipated. Here’s what really happened.

I want a new (animal) drug

Because the FDA is regulating the GE salmon as a “New Animal Drug,” in agency terminology, it convened a special Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee (VMAC) to evaluate it. During the first two days of meetings, the FDA’s Animal Biotechnology Interdisciplinary Group presented its analysis of the science behind the AquAdvantage to the committee. (You can see the agenda here.)

The committee wasn’t being asked whether or not the FDA should approve the GE salmon. Rather, it was asked four specific questions, basically: Do the data and information demonstrate that the genes put into the salmon are safe for the salmon? Is there a reasonable certainty of no harm to humans from consumption of foods derived from AquAdvantage salmon? Do the AquAdvantage Salmon demonstrably grow faster than their conventional counterparts? Are any potential environmental impacts from AquAdvantage Salmon production adequately mitigated by AquaBounty Technologies’ proposed conditions of use?

The second question, of course, is of the most importance to consumers, as is the discussion on the third day of meetings about whether the fish should be labeled as GE if approved.

The committee members had received a 180-page briefing packet about the GE salmon, but the members of the ABIG only saw data presented during the course of the meeting. One scientist who was there told me that in several cases, the FDA selectively chose which data it presented in a way that made the AquAdvantage look better.

For example, the briefing packet shows a comparison of omega-3 fatty acids — the “good” kind of fatty acids, believed to promote healthier hearts and prevent cancer — to the less-desirable omega-6 fatty acids in five groups of salmon. Data for three of the groups were submitted by AquaBounty Technologies, the company that makes the GE salmon: salmon on commercial salmon farms (“Farm raised”), non-GE salmon raised at AquaBounty’s facility (“Sponsor control”), and the genetically engineered AquAdvantage salmon. The omega-3 to omega-6 ratios for these groups are:

• Farm-raised — 3.9
• Sponsor control — 3.2
• GE salmon – 3.6

Based on this data, the GE salmon looks pretty good. But the table in the briefing packet shows numbers that were obtained independently from scientific literature for both wild-caught and farmed salmon. That data shows farmed salmon with an omega-3 to omega-6 ratio of 4.1, and wild salmon with a staggering 10.4. [Correction made Oct. 6: The previous numbers were mistakely converted to ratios in the editing process, when the FDA packet gives them as single values.] The differences in the farmed salmon could be due to whether they are being fed their natural carnivorous diet or one heavy in grains.)

Suddenly the GE salmon doesn’t look as good — especially considering that many people eat salmon specifically for the omega-3s in them, and try to avoid foods high in omega-6s. But in the PowerPoint presented in the meeting, the data for the wild salmon was left off entirely.

Despite the ABIG’s obvious interest in approving the GE salmon, the members of the special committee had enough scientific knowledge and integrity to ask questions and look at the facts. According to Consumers Union Senior Scientist Michael Hansen, who was called to testify, the science submitted in the FDA’s briefing packet was “sloppy,” “misleading,” and “woefully inadequate,” and it appears that the committee members independently figured that out. They could not conclude definitively, they said, that “the data and information demonstrate that there is a reasonable certainty of no harm from consumption of foods derived from AquAdvantage salmon.”

Raw material deal

During the third day, the public was invited to comment on issues related to labeling the GE salmon if it is approved. In a background document on labeling, the FDA explained that in the absence of a “material difference” between a GE and a non-GE food, it does not have the legal authority to require labeling based on consumer desire alone. The document adds that genetic engineering does not constitute a “material difference” in the eyes of the FDA, defined as a feature that can be detected by one of the five senses or some physical difference such as a change in a functional characteristic or some physical quality.

Hansen challenged the FDA’s interpretation of the law, saying that the FDA has misinterpreted what the courts have said on this issue. “The law states that all ‘material’ information must be on a label, otherwise it is considered false and misleading. ‘Material’ does not depend on any physical difference; it only depends on what information is considered to be of importance to consumers,” said Hansen. In a 2008 Consumers Union poll, 95 percent of respondents wanted food from genetically engineered animals to be labeled. (Consumers Union’s public comments on GE salmon labeling are here.)

The three days of meetings provided plenty of criticism of the science used by the FDA to determine that the GE salmon is safe, as well as of the legal arguments that would dispense with labeling the GE salmon if approved. But what do the leaders at FDA, the Department of Health and Human Services, and even the White House, want? The approval of the GE salmon, as of now, could go either way.

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Unfortunately, the FDA appears poised to rubber-stamp the AquAdvantage salmon. After working with AquaBounty since the mid-1990′s on the application for the GE salmon, the FDA has only just recently released 255 pages of technical information — and then allowed a mere 14 days for the public to comment on it. And there is something decidedly fishy about the makeup of the committee chosen to weigh the scientific risk assessments. One might say that the scales are heavily weighted in favor of pro-biotech interests.

The FDA is regulating the GE salmon as a “New Animal Drug,” in agency terminology, and it is thus being evaluated by a special Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee (VMAC) meeting today and yesterday. Consumers Union, the nonprofit watchdog group and publisher of Consumer Reports, has written a letter to the FDA and formally submitted comments protesting aspects of this approval process, from the shortened time frame, committee makeup, and data rigor (or lack of it). In the latest twist, the GE salmon data was taken from a small sample of fish raised in a facility in Prince Edward Island, whereas AquaBounty actually plans to raise the fish in Panama; thus, approving the fish based on the current data actually represents a violation of the law.

So, given the significance of the GE salmon’s approval process to the future of the U.S. food supply, why is the FDA all of a sudden in such a rush to approve the salmon that the public can only have 14 days to submit comments? A more standard public comment period would be 60 or 90 days. As Consumers Union points out, the GE salmon is not a life-saving medical technology that is urgently needed on the market. The only harm that could come from allowing the public 60 days to weigh in on the GE salmon is that AquaBounty will wait a few extra months to cash in. And perhaps independent scientists could raise difficult questions about the GE salmon’s safety that would make it harder to ram through its approval.

Is there a fish vet(eran) in the house?

Among the ten current members of the VMAC, eight are vets. The other two are Jodi Ann Lapidus and Alan G. Mathew. Lapidus is an assistant professor in the department of public health and preventative medicine in the division of biostatistics at Oregon Health & Science University; Mathew heads the department of animal science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Mathew also owns a 40-head cow-calf beef operation. He previously owned a 200-sow “farrow to finish” hog operation and a 720-acre grain farm.

Given the committee’s lack of expertise on genetic engineering and fish, the FDA added four “temporary voting members” for the GE salmon meeting.

Let’s take a closer look at these experts charged with objectively evaluating the risk to the public.

• Alison L. Van Eenennaam: A former Monsanto employee, Van Eenennaam works as a cooperative extension specialist in animal biotechnology and genomics at University of California-Davis. She also serves on the USDA’s heavily pro-genetic engineering Advisory Committee on Biotechnology and 21st Century Agriculture (AC21). Van Eenennaam has been vocal about her support for genetically engineering animals. She recently produced a YouTube video called “Animal Biotechnology” that compares genetic engineering and cloning to traditional animal breeding, artificial insemination, and in vitro insemination, as if they were all equally benign “biotechnologies.” The video oversimplifies genetic engineering, suggesting that scientists simply cut some DNA from one genome and paste it into another (almost as if it were as simple as using the Cut and Paste functions on your computer). But genetic engineering is highly imprecise. It takes many tries to successfully “paste” the genes into the DNA of the target species, and scientists have little control over where in the DNA the genes land. GE animals tend to have far higher rates of deformities than nature does. In the case of the GE salmon, AquaBounty Technologies successfully implanted its packet of genes into two separate locations in the Atlantic salmon’s DNA, and they had a different outcome from each. The genes pasted into one location resulted in faster-growing fish; the same genes pasted into a different location in the same DNA did not.

  Van Eenennaam’s primary work is not fish, but she has some background on GE fish. In publications, she has stated that genetically engineered fish will provide many benefits, such as increased feed-conversion efficiency, providing “economic and potential environmental benefits such as reduced feed waste and effluent from fish farms.” Her primary concern with GE fish is the difficulty in containing them, as farmed fish can escape, survive in wild ecosystems, and breed with wild populations.

• Kevin G. Wells: Also a genetic engineering expert, Wells has directly performed genetic engineering, working on the creation of a mastitis-resistant GE cow while he worked at the USDA in its Gene Evaluation and Mapping Laboratory. Like Van Eenennaam, he is more familiar with cows than fish. In his role at USDA, he worked on “communication of embryo and genome manipulation technologies to the public.”

  Today, Wells is an assistant professor at the University of Missouri, Columbia, in the division of animal sciences. He is also the senior scientist, project manager, and department head of embryology and cell biology at Revivicor Inc. (formerly PPL Therapeutics), a Virginia-based spinout company from the UK company that created the cloned sheep Dolly. Revivicor works on genetically engineering pigs for use in human medicine. In other words, Wells has a bit of a professional and financial stake in the approval process for the GE salmon, as his employer, Revivicor Inc., will need the government to also approve its genetically engineered animals.

• Gary Thorgaard: The lone fish expert on the entire committee. However, his specialization is in polyploidy, fish with extra complete sets of chromosomes. This is important in the GE salmon hearing, as the GE salmon are all female triploids (fish with three complete sets of chromosomes instead of two). Obviously, there is an importance in the committee understanding triploidy, as any differences observed in a GE triploid salmon (compared to a non-GE diploid) may be attributable to either the genetic engineering, triploidy, or both. Furthermore, the containment of the genetically engineered salmon will be an important issue in the hearing, and t
  riploidy is the method used to ensure that most (but not all) of the fish will be sterile. But the hearing will cover much more ground than triploidy.

• Gregory Jaffe: Last and perhaps most concerning, the committee’s supposed consumer advocate is a lawyer (not a scientist) representing the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an organization that favors the use of agricultural biotechnology. Like Van Eeenennaam, he has served on AC21, from 2004 to 2008. His views can be seen in a paper he wrote called “Creating the Proper Environment for Acceptance of Agricultural Biotechnology.” In it he states CSPI’s unequivocal support for agricultural biology and his belief that genetically engineered crops have increased productivity and farmer income while reducing pesticide use, and that GE crops are safe for humans and the environment. Each of these conclusions is controversial, and credible evidence abounds disproving each, give or take the claim on farmer income.

  Jaffe completes the paper by tackling what he sees as the true threat of biotechnology — public acceptance of GE foods. He calls for “a strong, but not stifling, regulatory system.” He also calls for the regulatory system to be “transparent and participatory” with “independent risk assessment research that informs the public and regulators.” Sounds good, but a full reading of the paper makes it apparent that perhaps his interest in regulation is intended more as a public show to convince the public to eat GE foods, than a true review of the safety of GE products. In a more recent article, “Questions About Genetically Engineered Animals,” Jaffe expresses optimism that genetically engineered animals, including the AquAdvantage salmon, will provide environmental or health benefits.

Looking at this stacked committee, Consumers Union in its letter recommends adding “three fish ecologists, four food safety experts (including specialists in food allergies and in the effects of hormones on human health), and scientists from the consumer and environmental community … to the Committee, to provide appropriate balance and expertise.”

Ana-filet-actic shock

Consumers Union also has many concerns about the safety of the fish, specifically increased allergenicity:

Because FDA’s assessment is inadequate, we are particularly concerned that this salmon may pose an increased risk of [severe], even life-threatening allergic reactions to sensitive individuals.  Instead of approving this product, FDA should be requiring studies with data from many more engineered fish, not the tiny sample of six fish [emphasis added] on which it currently bases its conclusions.

Consumers Union is also concerned about the lack of data on fish raised at the Panama facility where the GE salmon, if approved, will be raised. The data used in the FDA assessment of the GE salmon’s safety was all taken from fish raised at a facility in Prince Edward Island. The FDA itself acknowledges that “the culture (e.g., water temperature, pH, alkalinity, etc.) were likely to be significantly different from the facility at PEI as a result of differences in, among others, water surface, facility design, and environmental factors due to geographic location. . . .  the effect of the difference between the PEI and Panama facilities, especially temperature, on the resulting AquAdvantage phenotype is unknown.”

Consumers Union notes that this is a legal violation, based on the law the FDA is using to regulate the GE salmon:

FDA is regulating the GE salmon as a New Animal Drug, with the NAD being the genetic (e.g. rDNA) construct itself. Thus, the husbandry and rearing conditions of GE fish into which the genetic construct has been inserted would constitute the production process. Under the NAD provisions of the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetics Act (FFDCA), a NAD is granted for a specific production process; if a company changes the production process for a NAD, the company must submit data to the FDA to show that such a change does not have an effect on the safety or efficacy of the NAD, i.e. the FDA does not assume that drugs made with different production processes are equivalent and requires data to show they are equivalent.  Since the husbandry/rearing conditions differ between Panama and PEI — the former being in the tropics, the latter in the temperate zone — this means that the production process (e.g. husbandry/rearing conditions) differs as well, and FDA should require Aqua Bounty to submit data showing that it does not impact the safety of the NAD. FDA should insist, for example, that the rearing conditions in Panama do not increase the levels or potency of allergenic proteins in the salmon.

Requiring new data would, of course, slow down what has all of a sudden become a mad rush to approve an entirely new product.

Why is the FDA accepting such sloppy science, flouting its own regulations, giving the public nearly no time to weigh in, and packing its committee full of biotech hacks who will not ask the tough questions necessary to ensure the AquAdvantage salmon is safe before it winds up (unlabeled, the Washington Post reports) on our plates?

Who knows. But one thing’s for sure: AquaBounty, which only spent $30,000 on lobbying between the end of 2009 and the first half of 2010, is getting more than its money’s worth.