In the NST today:
KOTA KINABALU: A hybrid species of grouper, or “sak pan” in Chinese, has been developed, which will have great commercial value and help to bring the seafood industry closer to its target for the future.
The new species is a cross between the giant grouper (Epinephelus lanceolatus) and the tiger grouper (Epine-phelus fuscoguttatus), both of which are high-value species in great consumer demand.
The fishes:
The notion that we could manipulate the blueprint of life without understanding how the environment could be affected is little bit scary for me. There are environmentalists that call these kind of things as frankenfish, with the obvious reference to Frankenstein. Despite that, I still have not formed an opinion on genetically modified food. Nevertheless, I am very skeptical of a statement in the article:
BMIT director Prof Dr Saleem Mustafa said the new species will relieve the pressure on the wild grouper due to overfishing and other illegal fishing methods.
Is the good professor telling us that the new genetically superior grouper species will not compete with the existing ones? It is all too possible that instead of relieving pressure on wild, naturally occurring grouper population, the opposite scenario would occur.
The frankenfish issue has been debated in the US for several years now. In Malaysia, I have yet to hear a debate on it. Given how Malaysia is supposedly giving a stress on biotechnology, it is odd how the debate has not quite broken through the public sphere yet.
