I guess I wasn't clear in what I was trying to say. It doesn't appear they are genetically altering the fish. They are just selectively breeding them for desired traits and then treating them with hormones.
The odds of it affecting wild fish populations is probably slim... For one, the odds of the fish escaping is unlikely. Fish treated with hormones are not going to affect other wild fish even if they did escape. My concern is what the affects of selectively bred fish would have on the gene pool of wild fish should they escape. Would the addition of genetics not necessarily found in wild fish be harmful to the wild population should fish escape and successfully spawn with wild fish?
Even though fish maybe the same species or even the same subspecies, even fish populations from adjacent drainages have often been separated for thousands of years. This separation has no doubt led to genetic differences(however slight they may be), between the populations in each drainage. Although the biotic and abiotic factors in each drainage are similar, they are slightly different and each population will evolve to best survive those conditions.
When humans remove fish from the wild and breed them in an aquaculture facility, even if no intentional selective breeding is done, the selection if over a long enough period is going to be for survival in a aquaculture facility, not in the wild. Rainbow trout are a prime example of this... Many strains have been in captivity for so long, they do very poor when released into the wild.
IMO, when it comes to BG and YP or most other species of North American fishes, this is a minor worry compared to the many other more serious threats wild fish populations face in a human altered world...
And yes, there would be a lot more hungry and even starving people if it weren't for genetically altered and selectively bred food products, everything for soybeans to corn and chickens to cows... However, some of those genetic alteration and selective breeding have affected the wild populations from which those original food species came from. Its just the price we pay for being in a modern world where humans have far out surpassed the natural carrying capacity. Humans are just smart enough to alter their environment to allow more humans to live with a set amount of natural resources.
