how some take advantage of the power that was given to them. secrets of big dirty money. on r.g.p. . welcome back to odyssey i'm a little research a recap of the top stories now thousands of pakistanis voice theory of the scale of civilian deaths caused by u.s. drone attacks but americans are also alarms over the possible use of the technology on the homeless soil for surveillance. as massive protests in athens against the austerity measures aimed at securing a new international financial lifeline but economists warn that rallies in other e.u. states could follow amid i'm sure that greece is once again being bailed out. on

the plate off many and see government activists in georgia remains unknown and after a brutal police crackdown families fear they might never see their relatives again after they were detained around two weeks ago. by those are the headlines here and us here for this monday but now a look at how genetically modified salmon soon to come on the market could endanger our health and the population of ordinary fish a special report is next. these

slides are very interesting. and this is this is an interesting slide wit what you have here and one thousand nine hundred two dr ralph minster at university of pennsylvania said what if i can take the gene responsible for growth in human beings and put it into a mouse. and he did just that he actually was successful as you can see though the very large mouse here is the one that has successfully been an engineer with human shit growth genes making huge and you see the sibling next to it and this made a huge fear it was on the front page of these magazines new york times and then a few months later people said well this is interesting what you can really do with a really huge mouse i mean you can scare people you know there's a few things you can do with it it's not a very practical thing to have

a really huge mouse so then what happened is. yeah this is a part of agriculture said well what happens if we were to use the same experiment but to use it with pigs. and. so i went out to the u.s.d.a. here. in this with they did they took the human growth gene dr vern purcell with taxpayer dollars and i know the many taxpayers knew this actually took taxpayer dollars and took human genes growth genes and put them into this pick as you can see there's a problem instead of like the mouse that with human genes the grew so big. the genes work differently the human growth genes work differently mistake it was cross-eyed bowl a good investment and musculature had overwhelmed it. and i could only photograph against a plywood board here because it's the only and only way it could stand up and you can imagine the suffering and how terrible this was for this particular animal and

this is another experiment is what would happen they were taking the skin of the of a cow and see if they could genetically have a pate produce that skin apparently be more beneficial for slaughtering and so this is literally a pig. that has a cal's skin researchers are very proud of that. one of the. most important to understand about genetic engineering is that. it is really attempts to say listen no matter how unsustainable our technologies

we're not going to change the technology to fit their natural living systems we're going to change living systems so they fit the technology we all know how horrible factory farming is and one of the problems they have with egg laying chickens with hands is they have a mothering instinct they want to brute and here you see one of the brain experiments genetically engineering chickens to take out the mothering instinct from these voting chicken so they won't vote anymore they won't have the mothering instinct anymore so they'll fit the factory farm system this is one of the came near of birds they're working with the take away the mothering instinct so we don't change our factory farm system we actually take the mothering instinct out of a. animals so that they will fit the technology. in the mid eighty's once again a new supposedly golden age dawned for scientists genetic technology appeared to be the key to subordinating the earth and in particular its living creatures all of a sudden everything seemed possible they experimented with chickens without

feathers sheep without pelts to alleviate work after slaughtering with cows producing more milk and goods making silk they even imagined animals in the role of living organ donors. yet most of the experiments ended in failure and never found their way out of the laboratories. not only did the animals fail to conform to the scientists visions they were also deformed and incapable of survival.

only research on fish made progress here scientists could put their knowledge into practice more quickly as the animals have shorter generation times and the hundreds of thousands of eggs developed by themselves outside the mother. a canadian company by the name of aqua bounty is in the process of obtaining market approval for its genetically manipulated giant salmon it has developed a salmon that is six times larger than the other members of its species it needs only half the time to grow. farms is a small development stage research and development stage company we don't have a product on the market yet but we are researching of riding a different applications of biotechnology to fish farming. we're pretty much the only company in the in the field today. this is a picture of three related fish brothers and sisters that we developed this is

a fish that inherited the transferrin and these are its siblings that did not this this fish is about a year old as these fish are as well and as you can see there is a incredible excel aeration in the early life stages these fish are are are just barely ready to go into salt water this fish is almost ready to harvest after a year i want to. go. to one point we're going. to. go with that. this is the same salmon you know the eighteen month old here you see the enormous difference here and they said this is the same as it exists is not big enough it's not profitable enough doesn't grow fast enough so will fundamentally change it with foreign genes so that we can make more money off it so they can be more profit on it but an extraordinary and extraordinary picture obviously there's a there's

a financial consideration for the farmer i mean it's much more profitable to grow the salmon in a shorter time but there's a significant environmental impact it reduces the amount of time they're using the site so you get less fecal material that builds up on the bottom less on an feed there in the water for shorter period of time so they're exposed to native pathogens in the marine waters they're less exposed to disease less less likely for that to occur it's a technology that cannot exist with nature it's a technology that invades pollutes contaminates and ultimately destroys the natural species and this is fundamental to the crops or fish or animals that's the fundamental nature of biological pollution it cannot co-exist and in bays and destroys we need to understand that as we debate decision but the real key here is not the salmon the salmon is just the first product what we're really interested in what we're. now back in the lab is a lab here and

a carp which are really important. fish in the third world in china in africa for food security we are going to have difficulty supplying our quote of protein to people worldwide enlarges the high end kind of products like trout and salmon but the really important products for food security like carp and those are what we're working on we should have those on the market by the end of the decade. that is the real point of the whole matter the focus is on conquering the huge market in southeastern asia aqua bounty farms is getting ready to breed and sell eggs manipulated with great genes in huge amounts. the company conducts the scanty tests required for approval itself and neither independent scientists nor consumers have insights into the approval process it is confidential.

occasional reports that the modified fish are more aggressive suffer from internal as well as external deformities and die earlier the same results reached in earlier experiments on pigs cows and sheep give due cause for skepticism. regardless of any fear harbored by consumers the genetically modified fish are soon to learn in our parts and frying pans earlier than with genetically modified plants resistance is already building up among the populace genetically modified greens such as canola maison soya introduced eighty years ago continues to turn up on our plates unrecognized and own label which means that when shopping or eating in a restaurant we have no chance to identify these foods. ok well i'm going into this

court card because to be a seafood restaurant in this time and age is is saying something because we've been here for six years we sell a hell of a lot of fish we do about twelve million dollars a year so when we make a decision effects a lot of things and the decisions we make are fact markets you know we buy a lot of fish so if we decide not to buy a particular fish or not to sell a fish that means a lot. to nuclear engineering fish it just seems frightening we don't know whole lot about it now but from what i understand from what i could. visit lot of questions we don't know what a fix it's going to have on the human population but we also don't know what if it's going to come on the ocean. when you ask whether transgenic fish is available in the marketplace as far as i

understand right now the f.d.a. is considering whether to approve it or not the food and drug administration they're having a great deal of difficulty because there's not a lot of science that says transgenic fish is unhealthy for people to consume which is what the food and drug administration looks at there's a lot of concern about the environmental impacts if the transgenic fish escapes and they all escape these animals are born to escape if this vicious cage what kind of horrible impact will it have on the rest of the fish population these fish are bred to grow faster the stronger and they have a tremendous advantage over the wild fish population. i don't know what this might do to us or our children or our children's children and the government needs to become more active and at the very least label it so we know what we're the. it's just so unfair for people to work in ignorance even though they care even though

they want to know if the government doesn't cooperate. we're all victims of the one of the major problems we see with labeling people labeling isn't just a right to know issue. labeling is the only way you get traceability of the health effects of genetically engineered foods so labeling isn't just a right you know it's absolutely critical if we want health professionals to be able to trace the health effects of genetic engineering and hold those corporations liable for those of that so the corporations they don't want of consumers to know but they also know it saves them from liability and from anyone tracing potential health effects that's the triple importance of labeling. hardly any research has been done only effects of genetically modified foods on humans although at least in america these have been on supermarket shelves for the

past eighty years and are being consumed. only a few researches undertake the tedious and difficult task of conducting tests interims four hundred kilometers north of the arctic circle tell you traffic one of the few scientists worldwide who is not only industry payroll does research on the effects of genetically modified food on the health of humans and animals. organists like fish is eating nestle modified feet. then did go know what happens when there's been a next. consumer confidence that the fish is eating take a modified bird you really eat a fish not your vision extend the genetic modified food has changed the fish to both be sick center is still going at a modified d.n.a. present in the fish division extent you will be exposed to this in the next instant

there is no. experimental data to indicate what happens to the case. we are no go into the experimental animal departments there are doing feeding studies in rats. defied ingredients. and d.n.a. construct. this is a very unique experiment in the sense that it's a first experiment no very you have these scientists told that you can be take any difference between these rats groups and then you can go backwards and find all thwart this difference means in terms of health or in terms of my functions of the organs or whatever. the back room for this is.

menace and it will people who. are already eating then it can all be for food or feed or even a internet to modify pets. in addition to that the intended use in humans and the mystic and so called a survey know all the survey from the soil and through the table. holes lot of different species and animals in and consume all the plants and we don't know anything at both effects this feed on and the organism. no we're after the rats are second for iced in the department of experimental animals and the organs have been frozen tone at the very low temperature and then

will prevent to do is to analyze the organs and see their own foreign d.n.a. has a right in mosul against. condition d.n.a. can be found there in the organs. in experiments in the german. mice. and there are led by dr walsh that there are further. we're demonstrating that some types of foreign d.n.a. . from the organises. from the mice all of this. internal organs were even inserted into the. mice if that is the case if that happens and then. start of a high. regard to health. it seems like

a wide scale experiment on humans in view of the fact the genetically modified food has been on the market for eighty years and already eaten by millions of americans however it is an experiment being conducted without test groups and no knowledge can be gained as to whether and in what form our health is affected if one group eats genetically modified foods but the test group is lucky the entire population is simply subjected to the same potentially harmful substances. a few scientists suspect that there might be a connection to the increase of chronic illnesses and the weakening of the immune system and the consumer might wonder if he may not have any children if he gets fish in the future. do we at least know what repercussions this has on our environment and purdue university in indiana. and rick how it of informing tests and doing pioneer

research work to determine what actually happens when genetically modified fish soon to be introduced on the market and into the food chain lingle with wild fish for this purpose they are breeding their own transgenic fish to remain independent of the food industry. a number of animals have been made transgenic including commercially important. one group that has been studied quite a bit in terms of making. ensure that. individuals are fish and fish for commercial purposes so fifteen twenty different species like salmon like to laugh like carp have been made transgenic and so we have the facilities and also the expertise to investigate the problem and fish. but also through made our approach to answering those questions such that they could be used and pigs

could be used in cattle that can be used in any other type of organ or plants. any type of organism has a good goal of general features of biology that is common to any organism. to make the friends share the fish we did the recently fertilized eggs and the usually within five minutes of them being fertilized we bring them over to this room and go through a procedure called micro injection to literally inject into the egg thousands of copies or small segments of d.n.a. . those segments of d.n.a. include the gene that we're after in this case of salmon growth hormone gene as well as a promoter it turns out a gene on. there were started inserting that into a laugh that has just been fertilized. so what our student has here

is eggs on a small strip with a very last needle that contains the d.n.a. . and you go with that needle right up to the a membrane and then with air pressure. shoot the d.n.a. into the bay. and from there on it's a matter of chance as to what happens if the. segment of d.n.a. happens to be in the right place then it gets incorporated into the chromosomes of the organism it were successful making it raise any fish but that may only have about ten percent of five percent of the time so you go through really the worry is processes of injecting the eggs. we have this extraordinary situation where we're taking human genes and putting in a fish and we're mixing and matching the genetic makeup of the entire living

kingdom and the whole community and who's deciding what you know we're changing the permanent genetic makeup permanently the entire animal kingdom and who's deciding you know in our congress here in the united states legislatures throughout the world we've got all these different laws tax laws and corporate laws what could be more important than deciding on the permanent genetic future of life on earth. but we don't vote on that very few scientists and regulators and corporations impose that on us but there's no referendum and there's no elections and this is one of the fundamental issues i think we have democracy democracy is legislation. technologist is legislation technology actually is the basis for almost all major social change we don't vote on it when everything else you know whether the nuclear bomb or the automobile are now taking human genes and putting them in the other animals and mixing and matching although we don't vote on that. that we let

a few corporations scientists and the scientists and there's a fundamental question we need to answer about technology today is that we no longer can lead just a few decide these questions that will last for millennia we need to say technology is legislation technology is a law that will determine our future and we need to vote on that we need to be able to decide we need to become informed and we need to make a choice. this is the heart of why. he is fighting for single handedly at the university of minnesota bothered by the fact that the approval process is so secretive she began to conduct her own experiments with grants for independent research she examines the behavior of the transgenic fish bred by bill moore and recovered. in an old farm building she tries to reproduce a simulated ecosystem in many tanks and aquariums in order to conduct experiments

resembling a real life situation the reputation as an independent scientist reaches all the way to thailand the industry is especially anxious to capture the southeastern asian markets with genetically modified to love here a popular fish on asian menus for this reason it is pressing the governments with applications for approval to be able to sell its transgenic fish earlier than in america and the government of thailand became quite worried because they felt that they were not well equipped to review an application and even know what questions to ask and how do we do a risk assessment and be able to make a good decision about whether they should allow the fish into the country so they told the researchers please don't even apply formally to introduce these fish because we don't know what to do. under great time pressure and is compiling a risk assessment report together with tariq ali concerning the possible dangers to

the environment should transgenic fish be approved for commercial purposes for just as with foodstuffs the potential consequences to the environment have so far not been thoroughly explored. one of the things we want to know is if in the future the thai government approved genetically engineer to apia and if they were to escape from the fish farms and we know they will says the regular farm swap you have with that cause most more harm are would be equal to the possible harm that bet. hard to watch you know that every escaped our posing. to explore the possible risk factors and is working with a small fast reproducing fish species from japan many thousands of fish are measured photographed the eggs counted and their mating behavior observed.

transgenic male wild female wild male wild female. two males one female. which one asserts itself which offspring a stronger. none of it sounds like create three more profit more like hard work at weekends and overtime.

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