Thank you very much. I very much appreciate the opportunity to appear before you. I don't have a formal presentation, but I'm here to answer any questions you may have.
I work for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans as a research scientist in West Vancouver. We have an aquatic and molecular biology laboratory there, where we study genetics, physiology, and ecology of a variety of different fish species and strains.
Our main focus has been on the analysis of what we call novel organisms. These are defined under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act as “products of biotechnology”. The main effort in this area has been to be involved in the environmental risk assessment of genetically engineered growth-enhanced Atlantic salmon. This has been a long process for which we have generated similar kinds of strains, using Pacific salmon, to generate scientific data that can be used to support the risk assessment process.
I should say that in 2013 there was a very formal risk assessment conducted on the AquaBounty AquAdvantage Atlantic salmon. The determination under that, which was released by Environment Canada under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act legislation, was that there was a very low risk, with reasonable certainty, of environmental damage and indirect human health issues.
That allowed the proponents to consider growing their Atlantic salmon under the scenario they proposed, which was to grow eggs in the Atlantic region in Souris, P.E.I., and to ship those eggs to Panama, where they would be grown out and then returned to North America for sale.
That initial process in 2013 did not undertake a food safety evaluation, but just less than one hour ago, Health Canada released an announcement that the company is approved to sell transgenic fish in Canada. We are the first country globally to authorize the growth and sale for human consumption of a genetically engineered animal. I have very much been involved in that risk assessment process, and I'm happy to answer any questions on the details of that, if that's of interest.
The other project I've been involved in with regard to Atlantic salmon involved looking at whether there was a hybridization capability between Atlantic salmon grown in aquaculture facilities in British Columbia to breed with our local Pacific salmon. A basic conclusion from this is that there is very low risk of that.
I'll leave it there. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have on those topics or any others.