Santas little helper

A couple of days ago I bought a brand of canned mackerel filet which I hadn't
tried before.At home when I was about to open the can I saw a sign:
NON GENETICALLY MODIFIED
The ingredients apart from the fish were just salt and water.
So I must conclude that there is also GM modified mackerel available.
Have any of you folks ever come accross it ? What does it taste like ?

Entropic_Gnosis

GM mackerel, hmmm. Well i would hope it would still taste like mackerel, but it would probably glow, have natural antibiotics, nitrogen fix the soil, contain vitimins that no earthly fish has, and mow the lawn. My but that is a scary fish.

NonHomogenized

I have heard that, for a number of reasons, a lot of work in genetics is done in Switzerland.

As most people know, Switzerland is also the home of swiss cheese.

That being the case, all I have to say is: Holey Mackerel!

jayh

Or, perhaps it means that this mackeral is modified by non-genetic means.

Perhaps it means that it was cloned, since any mackerel that has parents is genetically modified by the fertilization process

It also carries the hint of one of the classic Supreme Court cases concerning truth in advertising. In the early 1900s canned salmon was popular, and another supplier started marketing a slightly different salmon species which had white meat rather than the usual pink. People were put off by that so they put a slogan on the label: "Doesn't turn pink in the can". The other suppliers sued for false advertising, this company said their label was absolutely truthful.

In the end, as I remember, the SC decided it was implied falsehood and ruled against it. Anyone who's taken marketing history will be familiar with the phrase 'doesn't turn pink in the can'.

Arken

Well duh. It wasn't born in the can!

fried beef sandwich

It means this mackeral didn't evolve, but rather god created it as is and it's been like that for only 6000 years and 3 days, dammit!

scombrid

I don't know of any mackerels in culture. All mackerel products be they sashimi grade bluefin tuna, canned yellowfin, or stinky old atlantic mackerel are wild caught.

Now, a heck of a lot of the salmon you'll run across is farmed in growout pens in various northern locals. Canada and several Scandanavian countries are the top producers. Many are genetically modified. There is a line that had some growth gene inserted from turbot or some such flatfish that doubles the growth rate and improves the feed conversion ratio of the salmon. Perhaps the mackerel canners are worried that the stigma associated with the GM Salmon will affect consumers' attitudes toward all commercial fish. Maybe they're marketing the mackerel as an non-GM alternative to salmon since it's hard to find non-GM salmon (wild Salmon are increasingly scarce and the net pens of farmed salmon aren't helping matters much as they are causing severe eutrophication and increasing parasite loads along wild migration routes. Oh, the escapes may be contaminating the wild gene pool).

ComestibleVenom

ALL NEW NON GM MACKEREL!

That's right folks, now you can eat all Natural Mackrel all the time. None of this unnatural lice resitance, our Natural Mackerel is crawling with the little buggers!

Zehava

The producer probably just wanted to avoid the stigma that comes with GM foods, and as such is going out of their way to ensure you that this fish is not modified.