Company genetically engineers fruit flies to be "biofactories" for fake meat production. The flies are engineered to produce growth factors, then killed and ground up into a mass from which the desired protein for making lab-grown meat is extracted. #GMOs gmwatch.org/en/106-news/la… 
Biotech firm Future Fields has notified the Canadian authorities of its intention to commercialise EntoEngine — their name for this #GMO fly. The public can comment on the application until 28 January. In our view, EntoEngine flies have serious environmental & ethical downsides.
Future Fields argue that the #GMO fly is needed to replace the usual way of producing growth factors — in bioreactors. They confirm what GMWatch has long said — that bioreactor technology is expensive, resource and energy hungry, and produces vast quantities of problematic waste.
Future Fields say growth factors cannot be produced cost-effectively using bioreactor tech — so they aim to produce them in #GMO fruit flies instead. BUT lab-grown meat still needs to be produced in huge bioreactors, with the consequent vast running costs & environmental impacts!
Future Fields describe the #GMO fly as "a standalone biofactory" — the ultimate reduction of a living creature to machine. But research, shows that fruit flies are capable of attention, working memory and awareness capabilities — abilities we normally only associate with mammals.
The risk with #GMO flies is that they could escape and breed in the environment or cross-breed with natural flies, leading to the escape of growth factor-producing genes into wild populations. And plenty of animals, including mammals, fish, amphibians, and birds, eat flies.
Because the growth factors produced in these #GMO flies are mammalian, they will to some degree be active in any animal that ingests them. This could cause uncontrolled cell division in the animal consumer — potentially leading to cancer.
Future Fields' #GMO fly will do little to improve the sustainability of the environmental catastrophe-in-the-making that is lab-grown meat. It poses serious environmental risks in the event of escape and the fly's grim life & grimmer death are ethically dubious, to say the least.
Remember: the public can comment on this application until 28 January 2023 and we encourage them to do so. In our view, "EntoEngine" flies pose serious environmental risks in the likely event that they escape contained conditions canada.ca/en/environment…
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
