Major food service company Aramark has made a public commitment to reject Genetically Engineered Salmon in compliance with demands from Tribal Nations.
This comes before the first U.S. sales of AquaBounty Technologies salmon.
The corporate consolidation of our seafood markets is pushing out community-based fishermen and BIPOC fishermen left and right and destroying our waters.
“Thanks to the efforts of countless Salmon Peoples and the BlockCorporateSalmon Campaign, today we make a stand for natural and wild salmon ecosystems. All around the country organizers are working with food sovereignty advocates to stop this fake salmon and biotech companies’ stealing from sustainable salmon communities and wild salmon markets.” Carl Wassilie, Yup’ik biologist and organizer with the #BlockCorporateSalmon campaign.
“This is an overdue but pivotal step towards real accountability and corporate integrity, one that every other company in the fisheries industry must make,” said Fawn Sharp, president of Quinault Indian Nation and plaintiff in the lawsuit against the FDA. “This incremental progress must continue as corporations learn to be morally accountable for their actions, and sincere and respectful partners to the Tribal Nations who have sustainably managed these fisheries since time immemorial.”
Aramark joins two other major food service companies, Compass Group and Sodexo, as well as the largest U.S. grocery retailers, seafood companies, and restaurants that have stated that they will not sell GE salmon. This widespread market rejection comes ahead of not only AquaBounty Technologies’ plans to sell the first GE animal approved for human consumption in the U.S., but also a scuffle between the USDA and the FDA about which agency should be regulating future GE animals.
“The corporate consolidation of our seafood markets is pushing out community-based fishermen and BIPOC fishermen left and right and destroying our waters,” said Jason Jarvis, a commercial fisherman from Rhode Island and the Board President of the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance (NAMA). “These GE salmon would be just another step in that direction, and we have the chance to stop more of this destruction right now.”
See Feb. 3rd press release from Uprooted and Rising.
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