The Atlantic salmon doesn’t require tweaking.

That’s the opinion of a senior adviser with Nature Canada who is lauding a recent U.S. court ruling that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) violated core environmental laws when it approved the genetic modification of Atlantic salmon in Canada.

“The Atlantic salmon is called the king of fish and it doesn’t really need improving,” said Mark Butler, a Nature Canada adviser and the former policy director at Ecology Action Centre, the only Canadian plaintiff in the lawsuit against the FDA.

“That’s what nature does,” Butler said of modifying Atlantic salmon. “Evolutionary forces are exerting influences on species in the wild to be the best, fittest and most well-suited for their environment. Having a gene introduced from the outside that changes the genetic makeup of the salmon is not a good thing and it’s something that we don’t want. It wouldn’t be good for the recreational fishery and wouldn’t be good for the ecology.”

The genetically modified (GM) salmon is the first genetically modified food animal approved in the world. It is being produced by the U.S. company AquaBounty at an on-land facility in Rollo Bay, P.E.I., and in the U.S., at a plant in Indiana. 

AquaBounty’s GM salmon is engineered to grow faster, using a growth hormone gene from Chinook salmon and genetic material from ocean pout. If GM salmon were to escape or are accidentally released into the environment, the new species could threaten wild populations by mating with endangered salmon species, out-competing them for scarce resources and habitat, and/or introducing new diseases. 

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that the FDA ignored the serious environmental consequences of approving GM salmon and the full extent of plans to grow and commercialize the salmon in the U.S. and around the world, violating the National Environmental Policy Act.