A sign that winter is not yet over, Varied Thrushes are still present on PAWS campus. In the spring, these birds head to their breeding territories in the fir forests of the mountains and foothills. Photo: Kevin Mack, PAWS
By Kevin Mack / PAWS
Although winter officially lasts a few more weeks, many wild animals on the PAWS campus are already feeling the approaching spring. Small birds are still foraging together in their winter feeding flocks, but there is palpable tension within the groups. Formerly content to feed side by side with one another, some of the male birds have begun to squabble when they feel a fellow flock member has come too close. They have also begun to tentatively sing their trilling territorial calls.
Visit the wildlife section of the PAWS website if you would like to discover more about the organization’s work. Also check out the common problems page as we are about to enter the time of year when wildlife conflicts are most likely to occur.
Former governors John Spellman (left) and Chris Gregoire sit down for a taping of “The Governors: A KCTS 9 Special” on Tuesday afternoon. 9. Photo: Jennifer Buchanan / The Herald
By Jerry Cornfield, Herald Writer
SEATTLE — Four former Washington governors spent an hour in a television studio Tuesday dishing on the high, low and unforgettable moments each experienced as the state’s chief executive.
And then it got interesting when the two liberal Democrats and two moderate Republicans detoured into politics.
Democrats Chris Gregoire and Mike Lowry and Republicans Dan Evans and John Spellman all praised last week’s Supreme Court ruling toppling a voter-approved requirement for a two-thirds majority to raise taxes.
“Two-thirds doesn’t make any sense,” said Evans, the state’s only three-term governor who served from 1965-77. “You can’t let the minority run the government or the state.”
But Gregoire, who left office in January after two terms, said not to expect a flood of new taxes this year because lawmakers know how popular the supermajority rule is with voters.
“I would be shocked if legislators run wild right now,” she said.
Then Evans added a spirited exclamation: “No legislator likes to do it unless they have to do it. Doggone it; the people have the last say.”
The gubernatorial quartet gathered in the KCTS9 studio in Seattle to tape an hour-long special to air April 16. Enrique Cerna of KCTS and Joni Balter, assistant political editor of The Seattle Times, moderated the conversation.
While each of the four ex-governors served in a different decade, they shared a similar passion for public service when they ran for the office.
Of course, not every one had an equally easy time getting the job.
Spellman first ran in 1976 and lost to Democrat Dixie Lee Ray, the state’s first woman governor.
“We didn’t see her coming on and it was kind of a shock,” he said. “We didn’t know how to lay a glove on her.”
Four years later he ran again. He expected a rematch but she lost in the primary. Spellman went on to defeat Democrat Jim McDermott and is the last Republican to serve as governor.
Gregoire etched her place in state history with a nail-biting defeat of Republican Dino Rossi in 2004 following recounts and a court case.
When asked to describe her experience, she joked: “One word comes to mind, refresh.” She was referring to continually checking online for the updated tallies of votes during the final hand count.
Once in office, each dealt with budget shortfalls. Three — Spellman, Lowry and Gregoire — raised taxes to help fill the gap.
“It had to be done,” Spellman said, adding the money was needed for schools and social services. “It didn’t help me politically.”
Evans, meanwhile, tried twice without success to win voter approval of an income tax as part of a larger reform package.
“We got our heads handed to us” the first time, he said. “We tried it one more time and it was almost three-to-one. People will live with the taxes they know. When something new comes up, they get skeptical.”
Lowry, who served from 1993-97, sounded much like a candidate again when he called today’s opposition to taxes “self-defeating. I think we’ve kind of lost sight of the importance of a well-run government. We need to get more revenue into this state.”
The potential of initiatives to handcuff lawmakers and governors in budget-writing and policy-making united the foursome.
“I think initiatives are leading us to anarchy,” Spellman said, adding he’d like to see some areas of government immune to change through initiatives.
As for achievements, Lowry cited his expansion of the Basic Health Program providing subsidized health insurance to the poor while Spellman said it was establishing a relationship with China which is now the state’s leading trade partner. Evans said he’s most proud of creating the community college system and the Department of Ecology.
One of the more emotional moments came when they discussed their toughest decisions.
For Gregoire, it was endorsing marriage for same-sex couples. She said she struggled with it mightily and “the weight of the world was lifted” when she went public.
Her most difficult day was the one when four Lakewood police officers were gunned down.
Lowry said he regrets not commuting the death sentence for convicted Snohomish County triple murderer Charles Campbell in 1994. Lowry opposed the death penalty but said he could not override the actions of the courts which had rejected Campbell’s repeated appeals.
One of the last questions they faced is how they prepared for life after being governor.
For Gregoire, it meant re-learning how to drive after eight years of getting chauffeured everywhere. She said she’s gaining her confidence, though not so much with parallel parking.
“It’s an adjustment,” she said. “Parking the car is an adjustment.”
Evans, who also served as a state lawmaker and U.S. senator, welcomed not being in the spotlight.
One of the frustrations of being governor, he said, is everyone recognizes you and you can’t get away with your family.
“It ultimately fades away and anonymity returns,” he said.
Ivar’s Birthday Bargain: $1.08 Menu Items Served up on March 19; plus free cake pops for the first 108 guests.
SEATTLE, March 6, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — He recently missed having a ferry named in his honor, but Ivar Haglund would have never missed a chance to shell-ebrate with a party! In that spirit, on Tuesday, March 19, all Ivar’s Seafood Restaurants, including Seafood Bars and full service restaurants throughout Washington State, will commemorate what would have been Ivar Haglund’s 108th birthday by offering special $1.08 dining deals in honor of their “flounder.”
As part of Ivar’s annual birthday festivities, throughout the day guests can purchase one full-priced entree and receive a second entree from a special birthday menu for just $1.08, simply by exclaiming “Happy Birthday, Ivar” when placing the order. In addition to the birthday discounts, Ivar’s will also treat the first 108 guests at each of its locations to a delicious blueberry birthday cake pop, one of Haglund’s favorite flavors.
To add to the festivities, Ivar’s is also hosting a two-week “Ivar Haglund Birthday Video and Photo Contest” (March 6-20) on its Facebook page. Fans can enter by uploading a creative video or photo wishing happy birthday to Haglund, for a chance to net a $108 Ivar’s gift card or other great prizes. Winners will be selected based on originality and creativity by a panel of Ivar’s judges. Enter at www.facebook.com/IvarsRestaurants by March 20.
Ivar Haglund began the popular restaurant chain bearing his name in 1938, when he opened a fish and chips stand at his Seattle aquarium, which was located on the Waterfront at Pier 3 (now Pier 54). He was well known for his popular radio ditties, as well as his comical stunts such as clam eating contests, taking advantage of a train-car syrup spill, and an Ivar’s clam postage stamp. He passed away in 1985 just shy of his 80th birthday. The history behind Ivar Haglund can be found on Ivar’s website. This year also marks a significant milestone, as it’s the company’s 75th anniversary, with more details revealed later this spring.
The birthday bargain is available all day long at any of the 23 Ivar’s Seafood Bars throughout the state, excluding stadium locations. All Ivar’s full service locations are also in on the action, including Ivar’s Acres of Clams on Seattle’s waterfront, Ivar’s Salmon House on north Lake Union, and Ivar’s Mukilteo Landing overlooking Possession Sound.
About Ivar’s Ivar’s Seafood Restaurants began on Seattle’s waterfront in 1938. Today, there are 23 Ivar’s fast casual Seafood Bars and three full-service restaurants: Ivar’s Acres of Clams, Ivar’s Salmon House and Ivar’s Mukilteo Landing. Ivar’s Seafood, Soup and Sauce Company markets and sells its award-winning soups, chowders and sauces both nationally and internationally. The company also operates regional stadium concessions including Safeco Field, CenturyLink Field, KeyArena, Bank of America Arena, Husky Stadium and Cheney Stadium. Learn more at http://www.ivars.com/.
Wildlife biologists from Stillaguamish, Tulalip and Western Washington University sample DNA from elk scat.
Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission
Wildlife biologists from the Stillaguamish and Tulalip tribes are testing a new way to track the population of the Nooksack elk herd using the animals’ scat.
Tribal biologists have partnered with Western Washington University’s Huxley College of the Environment to determine the most efficient way to collect DNA from elk scat. Genetic material can be found in the intestinal mucus coating the pellets. This winter, biologists sampled fresh scat using toothpicks and cotton swabs, submitting the samples to a genetics lab to determine which method is most effective at providing an animal’s unique genotype.
“This is a non-invasive method that does not require collaring animals or helicopter time to survey them,” said Stillaguamish biologist Jennifer Sevigny.
While the current method of using tracking collars and aerial surveys is expensive, it allows state and tribal wildlife managers to determine the bull-to-cow and cow-to-calf ratios needed to set harvest levels. To fit elk with tracking collars, the animals must be captured and tranquilized.
In the spring, the Stillaguamish and Tulalip tribes plan to coordinate a large population survey, sampling elk scat in the North Cascades Mountains, including forested landscapes that are hard to monitor during aerial surveys.
“Once individual elk are identified by their DNA, a population estimate can be obtained by re-sampling an area and comparing the number of originally identified individuals – the marked animals – to the newly identified animals – the unmarked animals,” said Tulalip wildlife manager Mike Sevigny.
During the past two decades, tribal and state co-managers completed numerous habitat restoration projects to improve forage for the Nooksack herd, which had declined to about 300 animals by 2003. According to 2012 aerial surveys, the herd has rebounded to as many as 1,400 elk.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) released a comprehensive report in September 2012, of American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) veterans. There are over 154,000 AI/AN veterans in the U.S. with over 6,000 in Washington state.
“American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) Veterans have played a vital role in the United States military for over two hundred years. Recognizing their long history of distinguished service, this report seeks to provide comprehensive statistics on this important cohort of Veterans through an examination of AIAN Active Duty, Reserve, and National Guard data together with demographic, socioeconomic, and health status statistics for AIAN Veteran, “states the U.S. dept of veteran affairs.
Native Americans serve in the U.S. Armed Forces at a higher rate per capita than any other ethnic group and have had more female servicemembers than any other group of servicemembers. The report, titled “American Indian and Alaska Servicemembers and Veterans,” shows that AI/AN alos have higher unemployment rates and aren’t recieving health care.
The Veterans Health Administration Office of rural Health states, “Native Veterans face many challenges to receiving adequate care. These challenges include long distances to care with few transportation resources and limited access to specialty care. Rural Native Veterans must sort out an often confusing mix of local and federal health care providers with overlapping and sometimes inconsistent coverage across Native, local, state, and federal levels. Frequently, Native practices in health and healing are not well-integrated into care they receive from clinics or hospitals. Finally, rural Native Veterans often are among the most impoverished with little access to training opportunities and few viable prospects for employment—all factors which are closely tied to poor health outcomes,”
US Census Bureau populations
Here are some statistics from the study:
The unemployment rate of AI/AN vets is 7.1%
The unemployment rate for vets of all other races is 4.9%
15.3% of AI/AN vets who do not have health insurance
6.3%of vets of all other races who do not have health insurance
36.4% AI/AN vets who suffer from one or more disability
26.2% of vets of all other races who suffer from one or more disability
18.9% AI/AN vets who have a service-connected disability rating
15.6% of vets of all other races who have a service-connected disability rating
Jimi Hendrix recorded everything. More than 40 years after his death, though, the tape is finally running out.
By Chris Talbott, AP Music Writer
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Jimi Hendrix recorded everything. More than 40 years after his death, though, the tape is finally running out.
“People, Hell & Angels,” out Tuesday, will be the last album of Hendrix’s unreleased studio material, according to Eddie Kramer, the engineer who recorded most of Hendrix’s music during his brief but spectacular career. That ends a four-decade run of posthumous releases by an artist whose legacy remains as vital and vibrant now as it was at the time of his death.
“Jimi utilized the studio as a rehearal space,” Kramer said. “That’s kind of an expensive way of doing things, but thank God he did.”
The 12 tracks on “People, Hell & Angels” were recorded in 1968-69 after the Jimi Hendrix Experience disbanded. There’s a changeable roster of backing musicians, including Buddy Miles and Billy Cox, who would briefly become Hendrix’s Band of Gypsies. Stephen Stills, recently of Buffalo Springfield, even popped up on bass on one track.
It was a difficult period for Hendrix as his business and creative endeavors became entangled, and he retreated to the studio to seek inspiration.
“Jimi used that time in the studio to experiment, to jam, to rehearse, and using this jam-rehearsal style of recording enabled him to try different musicians of different stripes and backgrounds, because they offered a musical challenge to him,” Kramer said. “He wanted to hear music expressed with different guys who could lend a different approach to it. And as part of this whole learning curve, what emerged was this band that played at Woodstock in `69, that little concert on the hill there.”
Many of the songs have been heard in different versions or forms before, but the music here is funkier than his best known work – at times sinuous, at times raucous. Horns pop up here and there. He’s a cosmic philosopher riding an earthbound backbeat on “Somewhere.” He’s a groovin’ bluesman enveloped in a bit of that purple haze on “Hear My Train a Comin’.” He challenges a saxophone to a fist fight on “Let Me Move You.” Then he channels James Brown on “Mojo Man” and ends the album as if shutting down an empty cinder-block club on a lonely stretch of dark highway with “Villanova Junction Blues.”
Hendrix died not long after making the last of these recordings. He’d already disbanded the players and was working with the Experience again in 1970 when he died of asphyxia in September 1970 at 27.
The last of the studio albums was timed for the year he would have turned 70. But in the 43 years that have passed since his death, he’s remained a fixture in American popular culture in much the same way Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash have endured. Still a radio staple, his image and music pops up often in commercials. There’s a biopic on the way with Andre Benjamin tackling the lead role. Even his out-there sense of fashion remains relevant.
Driving that image is the continued importance of his music, inspiring entranced young guitarists to attack his work in an endless loop of rediscovery over the decades. Tastes and sounds may change, but Hendrix always remains close at hand.
Maybe it’s because he was so far ahead of his time, we still haven’t caught up.
“He was a psychedelic warrior,” said Luther Dickinson, Grammy-nominated singer-guitar of the North Mississippi Allstars. “He was one of those forces that pushed evolution. He was kicking the doors down. He was forcing the future into our ears.”
For Dickinson and his brother Cody, it was Hendrix’s post-apocalyptic psych-rock epic “1983 … (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)” that blew their minds. But he means different things to different musicians. He played the chitlin circuit in the South before being discovered as a rocker in Europe and his music was also steeped in the blues, R&B and jazz.
“As a songwriter, he had the thing like Billy Gibbons (of ZZ Top) and a few current guys like Dan Auerbach or Jack White,” Dickinson said. “They have the ability to take a near-cliche blues guitar lick and turn it into a pop hook. Hendrix had that. That was one aspect. Also, he wrote some of the most beautiful guitar melodies. His ballads, there’s nothing to compare them to. Obviously he learned a lot from Curtis Mayfield and R&B music, but he took it so much farther.”
It’s that soulful side that first inspired Michael Kiwanuka, a young singer-songwriter who grew up in London thousands of miles away from Dickinson’s home in Hernando, Miss., yet was seized by Hendrix just as forcefully.
He first saw Hendrix in a documentary that was paired back to back with his performance at Woodstock. Kiwanuka was 12 and new to the guitar. He experienced a lot of sensations at once. First, there was the music. He wasn’t drawn to the rip-roaring psychedelia the Dickinsons favored, but the R&B-flavored classics like “Castles Made of Sand” and “The Wind Cries Mary.” The child of Ugandan immigrants also was amazed by Hendrix’s natural hairstyle, which closely resembled his own.
“I’d never seen an African-American, a guy of African descent, playing rock music,” Kiwanuka said. “I was listening to bands like Nirvana and stuff at the time. That’s what got me into rock music – the electric guitar. Every time I saw a modern black musician it was like R&B, so I’d never seen someone play electric guitar in a rock way that was African. That inspired me as well on top of the music. And you think, `Oh, I could do that.'”
“People, Hell & Angels” will likely continue that cycle of discovery. And though it may be the last of studio album, it won’t be the last we hear from Hendrix.
“This is the last studio album, but what’s coming up is the fact that we have tremendous amount of live recorded concerts in the vault,” Kramer said. “A lot of them were filmed, too, so be prepared in the next few years to see some fabulous live performances, one of which I’ve already mixed. We’re waiting for the release date – God knows when – but at some point in the future there’s a ton of great live material.”
This vintage Burberry hat is one of the items for sale at the Goodwill Designer Accessory Sale. Photo: Lauren Robinson
It’s time for the fourth annual U District Goodwill Designer Accessory Sale, March 8-9, 2013. High-end goods for bargain prices will be available for both men and women.
Source: Seattle Times
Goodwill’s Designer Accessory Sale
Nothing adds zing to spring like some dandy accessories. (Can’t go to the Easter Parade without a hat, right?) Goodwill can help — specifically, at the fourth annual University District Goodwill Designer Accessory Sale. Bargain-hunters can browse among real and faux designer shoes, handbags and more from the likes of Dooney & Bourke, Coach, Betsey Johnson, Marc Jacobs and Steve Madden. Men aren’t left out; staff will stock ties, hats, shoes and other man stuff.
The sale takes place 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday-Saturday at the U District Goodwill, 4552 University Way N.E., Seattle (www.seattlegoodwill.org).
Net proceeds benefit Goodwill’s free job-training and education programs.
The 11th annual Everett Home and Garden Show returns to Comcast Arena at Everett this weekend.
2013 Everett Home and Garden Show – 11th Year
Multiple Shows – Friday-Sunday, March 8, 9, 10
Hours: Friday: Noon to 8pm. Saturday: 10am to 7pm.
Sunday: 10am to 5pm (On Sunday a Day Light Savings Time Special) – Everyone to arrive between 10am and 11am will get in FREE.
Tickets available At Comcast Arena doors day of show.
Adults: $6.75. Seniors $6.25 $2 off Admission Coupons on our Website EverettHomeGardenShow.com
Free Parking in the Snohomish County Garage on Saturday and Sunday sponsored by BECU
Free parking in the Everpark Garage, 2815 Hoyt Ave on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday
Now in its 11th year the Everett Home & Garden Show has grown into the largest and only Home & Garden show in Snohomish County. It is “Your Home Improvement Source”, this year featuring the perfect opportunity to shop and compare the finest companies in the Snohomish and enjoy the numerous special features presented, plus everything you would need to make those lawn, garden and home transformations you’ve always wanted.
Guest Speakers •Bob Barca
• Northwest Master Gardener on growing berries in the Northwest, The Butterfly-Hummingbird Garden, water features and March garden activities.
•Steve Smith – The Whistling Gardener of Sunnyside Nursery
•Robert King – The “Deck King” with new deck products and demonstrations
•and more!
WSU Extension Service will have their Master Gardeners on hand to answer your questions.
Special interactive exhibits featuring: •Whispering Pines Landscape
•NW Quality Deck & Remodeling
•American Patio Covers
•WALP – Snohomish County Chapter of the Washington Association of Landscape Professional.
Wine Tasting sponsored by Dunn Lumber on Friday evening 5:30p to 6:30pm
Most voters in the state oppose higher transportation taxes, according to a new Elway Poll. The news comes as the Legislature considers raising revenue for highways and transit.
By Andrew Garber, Seattle Times Olympia bureau
OLYMPIA — A new poll showing most voters oppose additional transportation taxes highlights the hurdles lawmakers face when it comes to finding more money for highways and transit.
A Stuart Elway poll of 412 registered voters found that 72 percent oppose a higher gas tax and
62 percent oppose an increase in the car tab. The poll has a margin of error of 5 percentage points, plus or minus.
Those two taxes would provide most of the revenue in a nearly $10 billion transportation plan proposed by House Democrats last month, with the state gas tax already among the highest in the nation, rising to 47.5 cents within five years.
“I think it’s a hard sale to the public,” said Elway, a Seattle pollster. Not only did his poll find strong opposition to new taxes, but also that voters “don’t think there’s that big of a problem.”
The Elway Poll showed
70 percent of the voters, surveyed between Feb. 28 and March 2, rated the state’s transportation system as “satisfactory” or better.
Senate Transportation Committee co-Chairman Curtis King, R-Yakima, said the poll reinforced his belief that there’s no need to push through a transportation package this session.
Republicans control the Senate, while Democrats control the House and governor’s office.
“It’s kind of what I’ve been saying all along,” King said. “I don’t think the public is ready to have new taxes put on them.”
House Transportation Chairwoman Judy Clibborn, D-Mercer Island, said she wasn’t surprised by the poll, adding it won’t change her mission to do something this session.
“If we made all our decisions based on (polls) we wouldn’t get anything done,” she said.
The Legislature could decide to approve a tax package or send it to voters.
What does Clibborn take away from the survey?
“It tells us that it’s a heavy lift, and I never thought it would be anything but a heavy lift,” she said. Also, “it tells me that you have a lot of educating to do around what a revenue package would get you.”
She noted Elway’s poll did not ask voters about specific projects that would be funded by the increase in taxes. ”If you put projects in you’d get a different answer,” she said.
Elway, in his poll, pointed out he did not list projects and said “in theory, such a list would increase support by promising improvements in every part of the state.”
The House Democrats’ plan would plow billions of dollars into highway projects such as extensions of Highways 167 and 509, as well as Interstate 405 lanes, and ferry operations and terminals. It also would provide money to help build a new Columbia River bridge to Portland, widen Interstate 90 at Snoqualmie Pass and reduce Interstate 5 congestion around Joint Base Lewis-McChord.
The current proposal would increase the state gas tax by 10 cents over five years. Washington currently has the nation’s ninth-highest gas tax.
In addition, it would create a car-tab tax equal to 0.7 percent of a vehicle’s value — $140 for a $20,000 car.
There’s also a $25 sales fee on bicycles worth $500 or more that would raise $1 million over 10 years, a nod to motorists who complain bicyclists don’t pay their fair share.
Republicans have talked about the need for reforms before being willing to discuss additional money for transportation. They see that as possibly a multiyear process.
“What’s important now is we have too many problems,” House GOP Leader Richard DeBolt said. “We have to fix our problems before we can fund anything else. We have to build confidence with the people that we are spending their money correctly.”
House Republicans are expected to come out with proposals later this week.
A coalition of business, labor and environmental groups is pushing the Legislature to advance some transportation package this session.
Jeff Johnson, president of the Washington State Labor Council, said it’s too early to get worried.
“You never want to see a negative poll. But this debate has just started,” he said. “So I’m not overly concerned about it yet.”
WASHINGTON — Every summer since 1979, Kim Hubert has fished for sockeye salmon in Alaska’s Bristol Bay. It’s a family business in tiny Togiak that has, from time to time, also employed his wife and three children.
Hubert and his 21-year-old daughter work the nets now. They’re small permit holders who may catch and sell thousands of salmon in their nets each year, depending on the success of the run.
“We’ve got a fish camp out there, we enjoy the people and the bay and the work,” said Hubert, 58, a retired schoolteacher who lives in Eagle River. “Some years we lose a few bucks, and some years we make a few.”
They and other fishermen have been casting a wary eye on Washington, where the Food and Drug Administration is considering whether AquaBounty, a Massachusetts-based company with a lab on Prince Edward Island in Canada and growing facilities in Panama, may sell genetically engineered salmon to consumers in the United States.
More than 33,000 fishermen, environmentalists, food safety advocates and others have written to the FDA with concerns about the agency’s preliminary findings. Among the worries is that the genetically engineered fish might escape and mix with wild salmon. The company says that’s unlikely, not only because the fish are sterile but also because of its production process.
But there’s a reason that Alaska bans salmon fish farms in the state, the Sitka Conservation Society, an environmental group in southeast Alaska, said in its letter to the FDA. They fear that the company will expand to the U.S., where the fish would be closer to native salmon populations.”
These farms pollute water with concentrated fish waste and feed, spread sea lice and ultimately lead to escapement and interbreeding,” the organization said. “If genetically modified salmon are permitted, it will be only a matter of time before they are muddling the pure wild population in Alaska.”
Mostly, though, fishermen in Alaska fear that the new, faster-growing farmed fish would threaten their livelihood eventually by flooding the market with cheap fish. They’re also pressing for the AquaBounty salmon to be labeled as genetically engineered because they think that their wild-caught, more expensive product is superior. They want no confusion in the marketplace.”
In some ways I felt threatened,” Hubert said. “The threat may not be immediate, but I think down the line there could be some repercussions. We’ve had a lot of issues with labeling, and the ability (of consumers) to choose and know where the fish come from: what kind of stocks, whether they’re farmed or wild fish.”
Aqua Bounty has applied for federal approval to commercially produce a growth-enhanced, transgenic Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar). At 18 months, the transgenic fish is clearly much larger than the same-age normal fish. But overall growth of the same generation of fish evens out by 36 months. (Image Credit: Aqua Bounty Technologies)
The AquaBounty fish are Atlantic salmon that have been genetically altered with growth genes from a Chinook salmon and a sea eel. That makes them grow faster than other farmed Atlantic salmon, although they don’t get any bigger than regular salmon.
The FDA issued a preliminary finding in late December that the fish, known as the AquAdvantage Salmon, is as safe as eating conventional Atlantic salmon and that there’s a reasonable certainty of no harm in consuming it. The agency also issued a draft environmental assessment that there’s little chance of environmental harm from farming the fish.
However, after pressure from Congress — especially from Alaska lawmakers — the FDA in February extended the public comment period on its findings by 60 days. People have until April 26 to weigh in, and after that the agency will decide whether to issue a final report or pursue a more comprehensive environmental impact statement.
AquaBounty executives aren’t currently granting interviews. The company’s last public statement came in mid-February, when the FDA announced that it would extend the comment period. AquaBounty Chief Executive Officer Ron Stotish said at the time that they weren’t pleased with the delay.
Some food safety advocates are pushing for the FDA to do a full environmental review. They’re also petitioning the agency to consider the AquaBounty fish as a food additive rather than as an animal drug. The FDA uses its animal drug process to consider the safety of all potential genetically modified animals sold as food.
That change would make the approval process more transparent, as well as focus on the safety of the salmon as food, said Patty Lovera, the assistant director of Food & Water Watch. It joined Consumers Union, which is the advocacy division of Consumer Reports, and the nonprofit Center for Food Safety to petition the FDA.”
We just think it’s really deficient on the food front,” Lovera said. “What do we really know about allergies? What do we know about nutrition profile? That stuff’s really sketchy in that application that they put in. And we’d like to see a lot more of that, considering you’re going to eat the whole thing.”
People and animals already consume plenty of genetically modified grains, which aren’t required to be labeled in the U.S. A ballot measure requiring such labeling failed recently in California.
But the fish are the first genetically engineered animals being considered for human consumption in the U.S., and the approval process is being closely watched in the biotech field.
There’s a huge market for heart-healthy fish: Salmon is the second most popular seafood consumed in the U.S., behind tuna. And an estimated 91 percent of the seafood consumed in this country is imported; about half of that is from aquaculture.
Even if the AquaBounty fish is approved, however, supermarkets won’t be flooded with genetically engineered fish anytime soon, said Gregory Jaffe, the director of biotechnology at the Washington-based Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy organization. Jaffe was on the FDA advisory panel that reviewed the safety of the salmon in 2010 and found no cause for alarm.
AquaBounty would have to reapply to the FDA to expand operations.
“They talked about hundreds of tons of salmon a year. We import hundreds of thousands of tons of salmon a year,” Jaffe said. “So maybe it’ll be slightly easier to eat one of these salmon steaks than to win the lottery. But if someone wanted to find one of these salmon steaks out there to eat, it’s going to take a little effort.
“That hasn’t stopped lawmakers from Western states from fighting the FDA findings — or at a minimum, seeking a requirement that genetically engineered salmon be labeled. Consumer groups are making the same push.
“Any fish that is labeled as wild-caught, or Alaskan, might see some of its market actually go up,” said Michael Hansen, a senior scientist for Consumers Union. “Since this will not be labeled, people would not know whether the regular salmon they’re buying is engineered or not.
“In his mid-February statement, AquaBounty’s Stotish noted that no new facts had been introduced since the FDA’s findings late last year and that the company doesn’t think the additional comment period “materially affects our chances for approval.”
“There has been neither new information nor a clear legal or regulatory issue raised by the FDA since that time,” he said in the statement.
AquaBounty says in its press materials that it wants its fish to be labeled “Atlantic salmon.” The company says the nutritional and biological composition of its AquAdvantage Salmon is identical to Atlantic salmon, and therefore doesn’t require additional labeling based on its method of production.
The company notes that it supports voluntary branding by the farmers who grow its salmon, to identify what it calls “the environmentally friendly benefits of this product.”
An FDA spokeswoman, Theresa Eisenman, said a decision hadn’t yet been made regarding labeling AquAdvantage Salmon.
The FDA since 1992 has considered bioengineered foods to be no different from other foods “in any meaningful or uniform way.” The agency supports voluntary labeling that provides consumers with such information, however.
