Taxpayers should get their money back

Just four years after its first “harvest” of GM Atlantic salmon in Canada, the US biotechnology company AquaBounty is selling its on-land GM fish factory at Rollo Bay, Prince Edward Island, Canada.(1) Local community groups have confirmed that AquaBounty’s factory is now closed.(2)

“We never wanted genetically modified salmon and we’re relieved the company has shut down production,” said Sharon Labchuk of Earth Action PEI.

AquaBounty is not currently producing any genetically modified salmon.

AquaBounty owes $2.2 million to the Government of Prince Edward Island from a loan provided to assist construction of the building that is now for sale. In total, over $8 million was invested by the federal and provincial governments through multiple grants and loans.(3)

“Millions of our public money was wasted to support this worthless, dangerous genetically modified fish,” said Leo Broderick of The Council of Canadians-PEI Chapter which is also a member of the coalition GMO Free PEI that fought to stop the GM salmon in PEI.

In February 2023, AquaBounty announced that it would no longer produce GM salmon at Rollo Bay, and in September 2024 the company announced that the building is for sale. However, as recently as December 2023, the federal government provided AquaBounty with up to $612,000 to support “business productivity and scale-up” at Rollo Bay, and on February 29, 2024, provided AquaBounty with a loan of $158,246, at a 3% interest rate.(4)

“The federal and provincial governments should never have funded this technology that puts wild salmon at risk and jeopardises the funding and efforts these same governments are putting into restoring and protecting wild Atlantic salmon. This was a poor use of taxpayers’ money and governments should recoup our money,” says Mark Butler, Senior Advisor with Nature Canada.
The Canadian facility was one of two sites run by AquaBounty. Both are now closed. The second, in Indiana, US, was sold earlier this year to the company Superior Fresh that only uses non-GM fish and non-GM fish food.(5) AquaBounty says it will use funds from the building sales to finance construction of a bigger GM salmon factory in Ohio. However, construction in Ohio has been on hold since June 2023.

“This was always going to be a biotech boondoggle. Genetically modifying fish is unnecessary and unwanted,” said Lucy Sharratt, Coordinator of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network which has been tracking AquaBounty for over ten years.

The genetically modified salmon was the first-ever genetically modified food animal sold in the world. There is no mandatory labelling of GM foods in Canada for consumers.

Notes

(1) AquaBounty, news release. AquaBounty Technologies provides update, September 3, 2024. https://investors.aquabounty.com/news-releases/news-release-details/aquabounty-technologies-provides-update
(2) See photos posted at www.cban.ca/fish
(3) Christopher Pollon, How Canadians bankrolled the world’s first genetically engineered food animal, Vice, March 21, 2018. https://www.vice.com/en/article/how-canadians-bankrolled-the-worlds-first-genetically-engineered-food-animal/ and CBAN’s background www.cban.ca/GMsalmonupdate2024
(4) Both loans were provided by the federal Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA). See AquaBounty’s 10-K report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, for the quarterly period ending June 30, 2024. https://investors.aquabounty.com/static-files/351f0f61-d86b-4179-81e4-63125559c27b
(5) See Superior Fresh https://www.superiorfresh.com/fish

Source: CBAN https://cban.ca/gm-fish-factory-in-p-e-i-for-sale-taxpayers-should-get-their-money-back/