BOSTON (AP) - The environmental group Greenpeace plans to protest at a seafood trade show this week over the possibility that genetically engineered fish could be approved for sale as food in the United States.

Scientists are experimenting with ways to modify fish genes - to make fish grow faster, for example - and the Food and Drug Administration is considering whether to allow, for the first time, sales of such fish.

Greenpeace plans demonstrations outside Boston Tuesday as the International Boston Seafood Show, expected to attract thousands of vendors, gets under way.

``We want to send a clear message to the industry,'' said Kimberly Wilson, an activist with Greenpeace's Genetic Engineering Campaign. ``If these technologies cause populations to go into extinction, they're risking their own businesses.''

Greenpeace officials say they are concerned that genetically engineered fish are unsafe and that altered fish could escape into the wild, adversely affecting eons of natural evolution.

But supporters say the technology is necessary to feed the world's rapidly growing population.

``An organization like Greenpeace simply forgets the human factor in all these equations,'' said Elliot Entis, CEO of Aqua Bounty Farms, a suburban Boston company seeking FDA approval for its genetically modified salmon. ``The product they sell is fear.''

Aqua Bounty's salmon reach full size more quickly than normal salmon. The fish are sterile, Entis said, so that even if they escape their seaside aquaculture pens into the ocean, they are unlikely to reproduce.

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