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Japan approved edited fish for sale in 2021: a red sea bream with more muscle, made by disabling the gene that limits muscle growth, and a faster-growing tiger puffer. The famous fast-growing AquAdvantage salmon is often mentioned in the same breath but is a different thing entirely — it carries genes from other species, making it transgenic rather than edited, and it took roughly twenty-five years to be approved.
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Regional Fish Institute's edited red sea bream, with myostatin disrupted to increase muscle mass, and edited tiger puffer with increased appetite, were notified in Japan in 2021 and sold directly. AquAdvantage salmon, by contrast, is transgenic — carrying a Chinook salmon growth hormone gene under an ocean pout promoter — and required approximately 25 years for FDA approval. The contrast in timelines is the clearest illustration of how differently the two categories are treated.
Sources
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration
AquAdvantage Salmon ↗