Precious White People Losing Their Damn Minds Over GMO Salmon

DO WANT.

SOMEONE SAID "GMO," GET THE CAGE-FREE ORGANIC PITCHFORKS!

For those who missed it, earlier this month, the FDA approved the sale of GMO salmon for the first time, after a company called AquaBounty came up with a way to allow salmon to grow twice as big, twice as fast, by cross-breeding an Atlantic Salmon with a Pacific-Chinook Salmon and adding some DNA from an eel-like creature called the ocean pout. This led to a predictable backlash, as Whole Foods (which apparently took a break from its busy schedule of gouging the crap out of customers ), Trader Joe's, and Target -- among other, smaller retailers, and chains like Kroger and Safeway who had weighed in months ago -- stated they would refuse to stock any so-called "Frankenfish." More recently, the list of outlets refusing to sell GMO salmon has been joined by CostCo (the nation's largest salmon retailer) and Red Lobster, for whom genetically-modified salmon is apparently way scarier than the radioactive sewer dredgings it ordinarily serves.

CostCo in particular seems to have fallen victim to angry anti-GMO protests, part of a craze reaching its fever pitch whereby 4 out of 5 of Americans apparently support mandatory labels on food containing DNA (which includes roughly every food that has ever existed), Chipotle faps to its own righteousness in eliminating GMO's from its menu (except LOL JUST KIDDING, TAKESIES BACKSIES), and The Food Babe remains inexplicably and unjustly free from prison.

To a lot of Americans, GMO = bad and scary, because artisanal organic vegan reasons. That human beings have been poking around with selective breeding, cross-pollination, and crop/livestock manipulation for literally as long as we have had crops and livestock is apparently irrelevant. Then again, these are often the same people indirectly advocating for a nationwide Happy Funtimes Measles Adventure, so a lack of logic is pretty par for the course.

The funniest response came from Alaskan radio host Shannyn Moore, who penned an op-ed for the Alaska Dispatch News that reads as the world's most unironic Thanks, Obama.

Make no mistake. I’m furious with the Obama administration.

When Barack Obama was campaigning in 2007, he said something that I'd been yearning to hear. He vowed, as president, he would strive to "let folks know when their food is genetically modified because Americans have a right to know what they're buying."

Yes, of all the reasons to criticize the President (drones, drones, those dad jeans, drones), his unconscionable inaction on the vital issue of GMO food labeling has to sit at the top of the list. Well done, you.

Does it have bolts sticking out from behind its gills? It might as well have. Mary Shelley wouldn't eat this thing. This creature would be the first genetically modified animal to hit our supermarket shelves.

"And what's the deal with airline food, I tells ya?! WOCKA WOCKA WOCKA!"

Her second sentence is technically correct, though, unless you want to count the fact that we now eat chickens that look like the villain from a Rocky movie.

Only Alaska wild gets a place at our table.

I'm sorry, this is the only possible appropriate response to that:

Moore does bring up one salient point: that it's unfair for Alaskan fisherman to be unable to label their salmon "organic" because everything they eat can't be determined with 100% certainty, while farm-raised GMO salmon are allowed to use the term. Unfortunately, that point is lost within a sea of whinging about how unfair and unethical the FDA's decision to allow GMO salmon to hit the market is, and how President Snidely Obamalash probably sits up in his Ivory Oval Office cackling to himself while he adjusts his monocle.

For everyone arguing against GMO salmon, the problems it could solve are apparently irrelevant. Never mind that we're on the precipice of a massive worldwide seafood shortage because we've halved the total number of fish in the ocean in the last half-century. Also never mind that a significant percentage of the world's most food-vulnerable people depend on fish to survive, and that a breakthrough that produces bigger fish faster could keep them from starving. None of that matters, for there are things for crunchy privileged white people to complain about! Yaaaaay white people, saviors of our own imaginations!

Ruining things remains the white people superpower.

[ Alaska Dispatch News / GrubStreet / KIRO-7 ]