What should you know? Well, the fish, according to the agency's analysis, appear safe for us to eat and to grow. But there are some details we can't quite shake. Chinook Connection: The inventors of the genetically engineered fish took a gene for growth hormone from the Pacific's Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), the biggest salmon around, and spliced it into the DNA of the Atlantic species (Salmo salar).