Recently, the U.S. Department of Marine Resources (DMR) of the U.S. State of Maine rejected an application for an aquaculture farm license from American aquaculture company American Aquafarms, which most likely means that attempts by U.S. aquaculture companies to conduct aquaculture in the natural waters of the United States have failed again.
American Aquafarms first proposed an inshore cage salmon farming program in Frenchman Bay, Gulf of Maine, in October 2020, when the company's head said it would achieve 30,000 tonnes of farmed salmon production by 2024. Nowadays, without a breeding license, this plan will naturally be "in vain".
The United States has a very rich natural marine aquaculture resources, but the aquaculture industry has not been able to develop, can only rely on "sporadic" land-based aquaculture to support the façade, the most fundamental reason is that the federal and local state regulations and policies do not support.
Because of too good luck, early among the developed countries, the United States naturally does not need to take the "fish farming to get rich" developing country conventional route, want to eat fish imports on the line, by the way can also protect the domestic natural environment and fishery resources, why not?
Therefore, the US federal government banned the cultivation of any fin fish in the natural waters of the United States (except Hawaii) until the outbreak of the epidemic, because too much reliance on imported aquatic products involved domestic food safety issues, then US President Trump lifted this aquaculture ban in 2020.
Although this layer of "window paper" was broken, it is still very difficult for the U.S. aquaculture industry to engage in aquaculture in the United States. To put it bluntly, the cancellation of the "breeding ban" only gives aquatic enterprises a general direction, but the specific implementation has to start from the state government, and various obstacles are very large.
Because the development of aquaculture in the natural waters of the United States is almost blank, the relevant legislation of the US state governments is also blank, coupled with the hostile attitude of traditional capture fisheries, so that the aquaculture industry in the natural waters of the United States wants to achieve from scratch, which is difficult to imagine.
Fish eggs are not qualified?
The American Aquafarms farming application was rejected, and the Maine Department of Marine Resources gave the reason that the farm's eggs were not qualified, but the problem was obviously not as simple as it seemed literally.
Among the aquaculture solutions submitted by American Aquafarms is the well-known Canadian company AquaBounty. It is necessary to mention this Canadian company here. The company began laying out salmon fry breeding in the 1990s, a little later than norway, and is now one of the world's leading producers of salmon fry.
AquaBounty's biggest feature is its genetically modified technology, which is the supply of genetically modified salmon eggs. In the early days of salmon breeding, AquaBounty took a different route from Norway. For so many years, the Norwegian side has insisted on breeding high-quality salmon through cross breeding, while AquaBounty has chosen transgenic technology from the beginning to breed faster-growing and higher-feed salmon varieties through gene editing.
Today, land-based salmon farming companies in the United States have used genetically modified salmon eggs produced by AquaBounty for breeding and production, and the genetically modified salmon produced has been approved for sale in the United States.
Land-based salmon farm
While AquaBounty's dominant product is genetically modified salmon eggs, American Aquafarms certainly wouldn't be stupid enough to "go against the wind."
Genetically modified and non-North American salmon are banned from being farmed in the open waters of the continental United States because frequent escapes from cage culture pose a serious threat to native North American salmon populations.
Therefore, American Aquafarms will use AquaBounty's north American homegrown non-GMO salmon eggs, but the problem is still on the fish eggs.
The U.S. Department of Marine Resources of the State of Maine issued an audit opinion that American Aquafarms failed to provide documentation that the source of the eggs met the genetic requirements required by law that farmed Atlantic salmon must be of North American ancestry, and that the egg hatcheries were unable to meet the specific requirements for testing and screening for suspected pathogens (i.e., bacteria and viruses).
For these problems, AquaBounty believes that they do not exist. The company has submitted all technical information and genotypes related to fish eggs according to the requirements of American Aquafarms, and the transport of fish eggs is also fully compliant with the requirements of the US Food and Drug Administration, and there is no case of simultaneous generation of genetically modified and non-GMO fish eggs in the same facility.
American Aquafarms is clearly not going to give up easily, and is actively preparing for the audit results given by the US Department of Marine Resources of the Us.S. State of Maine, and remains committed to building a sustainable and environmentally friendly aquaculture corporate image in Maine. Compared with the active aquatic enterprises, the Attitude of the Maine Department of Marine Resources is very "cold", and said that it will not take further action on the company's license application, and if American Aquafarms resubmits the application, the department may take two to three years to deal with it, which is very embarrassing for American Aquafarms.
Fishermen's enemies?
There was no apparent violation of the aquaculture application submitted by American Aquafarms, and the rejection of the application was most likely the result of the "comprehensive consideration" of the Maine Department of Marine Resources.
As an important fishing town in the United States, Maine has a strong traditional fishery strength, and if aquaculture in open natural waters is bound to have a certain impact on traditional fisheries, so the civil pressure that Maine will face to open this mouth will be very large. Because for Maine's traditional fisheries, it is crucial to hold the first position, and once lost, the doors of aquaculture are completely opened.
For the relevant government departments in the United States, once the aquaculture in natural waters is started, enterprise supervision, environmental monitoring, the formulation and improvement of relevant management systems will also be on the agenda at the same time, the workload will increase, the financial budget will certainly have to be added, and the best choice is undoubtedly to maintain the status quo ante. Therefore, it is difficult for aquatic enterprises to engage in natural open water aquaculture in the United States with peace of mind, and it is undoubtedly a protracted battle. (End)
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