the 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 trends genic fish escapes what kind of horrible impact will it have on the rest of the fish population you don't know what this might do to us or our children or our children's children in our congress here in the united states legislatures throughout the world we vote 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. wealthy british soil some time to. market why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy

with much stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines join in to conjure reports . welcome back you're watching our team here is a look at the week's top stories the leading capitals been rocked by nato's have used air strikes since the start of military operations in the bombings have reportedly claimed more than thirty lives that led to rolling anger at foreign intervention and. moscow agrees to lift a ban on european vegetables if the e.u. can guarantee they are free from the deadly e. coli bacteria surance came from president medvedev during the russian talks the leaders also discuss russia's accession to the world trade organization and the situation in libya. and also the e.u. prepares a new rescue package for bankruptcy sparking massive protests again. tougher cuts

in the country there's outrage too in germany work critics say they're tired of paying for people's debts calling in greece to leave the eurozone. and people here in moscow and nationwide prepare to celebrate russia today it's twenty years since the country staged its first free presidential elections just one year after declaring independence from the soviet union. so the top stories of the week i'll be alarming impact of genetically modified food is explored in our special report that's coming your way next.

and these lies are very interesting. and this is this is an interesting slide would do what you have here in one thousand nine hundred two dr ralph ben straight the 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 engineered with human growth genes to make it 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 but what do you really do

with a really huge mouse i mean you can scare people you know this if you think you can do that but it's not a very practical thing to have a really huge mouse so then what happened is. yeah this is the 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. and this is what 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 pig as you can see there's a problem instead of like the mouse that with human genes it grew so big. the genes work differently that human growth genes work differently this pig is cross-eyed bowlegged impotent the musculature had overwhelmed it. and i can only photograph it against the plywood board here because it's the only only way you 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 a cow and see if they could genetically have a pig produce that's going to probably be more beneficial for slaughtering and so this is literally a pig. that has a cow's skin researchers are very proud of that. one of the. most important to understand about genetic engineering is that.

it is really attempt to say listen no matter how unsustainable our technologies we're not going to change the technology to fit the 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 hens 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 brooding 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 kind 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 a variety of different applications of biotechnology to fish farming and 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 trans gene 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 just barely ready to go into salt water this fish is almost ready to harvest after a year they want. to. go for. the one point two or three children. that. point nine seven. this is the same salmon that you know eighteen months ago here you see the enormous difference here and basically the same the salmon is 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 when an extraordinary an 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 a site so you get less fecal material that builds up on the bottom less on eat and feed there in the water for a 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 with the crops or fish or animals that's the fundamental nature of biological pollution it cannot co-exist invades and destroys we need to understand that as we debate this issue but the real key here is not the

salmon the salmon is just the first product what we're really interested in and what will work. on now back in the lab is a happier 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 aquatic protein to people worldwide and not just the high end kind of products like trout and salmon but the really important products for food security like a lappie and 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 growth genes in huge amounts. the company conducts the scanty tests required for approval itself and neither independent scientists nor consumers

have insight 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 grain such as canola maize and soya introduced eighty years ago continues to turn up on our plates recognized 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

boycott because to be a seafood restaurant in this time and age 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 it affects a lot of things and the decisions we make a 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've. this is a 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 is 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 impact if the transgenic fish escapes and they all escape these animals are born to escape if this vicious caves 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. we 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 worry. it's just

so unfair for people to work in ignorance even though they care even though they want to know that the government doesn't cooperate. we're all victims of big 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 to 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 effects so the corporations hate labeling because they don't want to 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 interim 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. when an organization like fish is eating and if they modified feet. then did don't know what happens then there's the next. consumer comes in that the fish is eating take a modified bird you really eat the fish. which extends the genetically modified food has changed the fish to both the beach extent there is still connected

modified d.n.a. present in the fish to be six then you will be exposed to this in the next instance there is no. experimental data to indicate what happens in the case. we are no go into the experimental animal departments very are doing feeding studies in rats. defied ingredients food and d.n.a. construct. this is a very unique experiment in the sense that it's a first experiment. will vary and you have these scientists told that you can detect any difference between these rats groups and then you can go backwards and find this difference means in terms of health or in terms of matters

of the organs or whatever. the back room for this is that. many places in the in the ruled people. are already eating food or feed or originating in the fight that's. in addition to that the intended use in humans and domestic calls we know all of the survey from the soybean and through the table. holes lot of different species and moles. and consume all the plants and we don't know anything at both effects the speed and the old innocent. no one after the rats. in the department of experimental animals

the organs have been frozen don't at the very low temperature and then will prevent to do is to analyze the organs and see their own foreign d.n.a. . in those organs and. d.n.a. can be found there in the organs. in experiments in german. mice. there are led by dr walter they're for. we're demonstrating that some types of foreign d.n.a. . from the organises. from the mice. in the internal organs and they're even inserted into the. mice if that is the case if that happens then. start of the.

process. of our 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 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 you may not have any children if you eat 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 mingle 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 major as yet a concluding 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 make

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 because the good old general features of biology that is common to any organism. to make the transgenic 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 so 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 that turns a gene on. and we're 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 hope that needle right up to the membrane and then with air pressure. shoot the d.n.a. into the. and from there on it's a matter of chance as to what happens if the. but it d.n.a. happens to be in the right place and it gets incorporated into the chromosomes of the organism and we're successful making it crazy to fish but that may only have about two percent or five percent of the time so you go through many of the boreas processes of injecting. we have this extraordinary situation where we're taking human genes and put him 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 who 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 vote 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 a democracy democracy is legislation. technology is legislation technology actually is the basis for almost all major social change we don't vote on it when everything else but whether the nuclear bomb or the automobile are now taking human

genes and putting them in the other animals and mixing matches although we don't vote on that oh no that would let a few corporations scientists and railways decide and that'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 the choice. this is the heart of one. 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 rico it. in an old phone

building she tries to reproduce a simulated ecosystem in many tanks and aquariums in order to conduct experiments resembling a real life situation a reputation as an independent scientist reaches all the way to thailand the industry is especially anxious to capture the southeastern asian market with genetically modified. 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 to do a risk assessment and be able to make a good decision about whether they should allow the question of 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 tyco leak 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 authority explored. one of the things we want to know is if in the future the thai government approved genetically engineer tilapia and if they were to escape from the fish farms and we know they will says the regular farm tilapia have what that cause most more harm or what would be equal to the possible harm that the. farm to lafayette that every escaped are 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 meeting behavior observed.

transgenic male wild female. wild mayo wild female. to male one female. which one asserts itself which offspring a stronger. none of it sounds like a quick three more profit more like hard work at weekends over time.