Thursday, October 1, 2009

Bio-Engineered Widllife and Artificial Hunting



Nine year ago trout that were genetically engineered to grow extra-big escaped from a fish farm and entered Lake Diefenbaker, a man-made lake in Southern Saskatchewan, Canada.

The trout, raised by an aquaculture company called CanGro, are Steelhead X Rainbow crosses (a Rainbow and a Steelhead are the same fish, with one stuck in freshwater and the other migrating into fresh water from salt), and are triploid female.

A triploid fish is made by putting the eggs in a pressure cooker so that the resulting fish end up with three, rather than two, sex chromosomes.

As the sages at The Trout Underground ask:

In other words, the “pending” world record (IGFA) was raised in a pen, genetically manipulated to grow huge, and regularly fed. Not exactly in line with the “spirit” of the rules, and it raises some pretty interesting questions — which I expect you to answer.

Can anything raised (and fed) in a pen be a “real” world record?


The fact that this question is even being asked tells us what a sad state of affairs we are in.



Where we do draw the line? Where do we begin to fence out the fakery? In a land groaning with wildlife and public lands, is it too much to ask that people actually get off their asses and go hunt and fish like adults?
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