Nine year ago trout that were genetically engineered to grow extra-big escaped from a fish farm and entered Lake Diefenbaker, a man-made lake in Southern Saskatchewan, Canada.
The trout, raised by an aquaculture company called CanGro, are Steelhead X Rainbow crosses (a Rainbow and a Steelhead are the same fish, with one stuck in freshwater and the other migrating into fresh water from salt), and are triploid female.
A triploid fish is made by putting the eggs in a pressure cooker so that the resulting fish end up with three, rather than two, sex chromosomes.
As the sages at The Trout Underground ask:
In other words, the “pending” world record (IGFA) was raised in a pen, genetically manipulated to grow huge, and regularly fed. Not exactly in line with the “spirit” of the rules, and it raises some pretty interesting questions — which I expect you to answer.
Can anything raised (and fed) in a pen be a “real” world record?
The fact that this question is even being asked tells us what a sad state of affairs we are in.
- Farm-raised pet pigs are touted as wild, and are shot by 12-year olds in fenced enclosures.
- Captive pen-raised birds are tossed into the air from towers while gunners blast away.
- Farm-raised bison, goat, boar and deer, are trucked into places like "Sunrize Acres" by people like Ted Nuggent, who runs a pay-to-shoot place where pathetic people can shoot corn-fed dependents.
Where we do draw the line? Where do we begin to fence out the fakery? In a land groaning with wildlife and public lands, is it too much to ask that people actually get off their asses and go hunt and fish like adults?
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3 comments:
That reminds me so much of that hogzilla story from a few years ago.
It turns out that the people who owned that land in Georgia where the creature was killed were breeding and feeding for a super-sized version of the bluegill (which they called "brim" or "bream." How they get that name I have never understood. It's an effing bluegill.)
It just makes sense that they bred a Hampshire hog to a capture "wild boar," which they fed with all of their bluegill concoctions, and then turned it out for their hired man to kill.
It was more about advertising their giant bluegills than their giant hogs.
I am okay with shooting pen-raised pheasants (especially if they've been allowed to go wild for a few weeks), but I'm not with shooting pen-raised New World quail. It's more sporting to shoot domestic chickens than pen-raised New World quail.
Ted Nugent likes to think himself a great sportsman, but all I see him doing is shooting exotic animals that he bred to shoot.
It's like going to the zoo with a gun.
Like this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvZVZ8h1p4Q
A subplot from Sick Puppy by Carl Hiaasen
Involves Stoat's efforts to find an aged rhinoceros that he can kill in a staged big-game hunt somewhere in the wilds of Florida.
And then what's almost funny is how eveyrone gets their panties in a twist over actual conservation hunts, like the Idaho wolf hunt this year, or even suburban deer culls.
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