Salmon a la surrogate

A story Friday on how fish are being engineered to produce other species is both fascinating and sort of creepy.

"Surrogate broodstocking," as it's so poetically known, begins with designing a sterile breed of fish, then injecting those fish with stem cells that will grow into sperm of another species. Voila -- when they're grown, these highly manipulated, designer fish can fertilize eggs and produce a different species.

One of the goals is to raise the number of the endangered sockeye salmon, which seems like good news to all of us who like nothing better than a dinner of grilled salmon. But now we will be forced to wonder about its lineage and if we're actually getting a little rogue dogfish mixed in.

Maybe, as with oil, we should just cut down on our consumption. . . . .