The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is considering whether to approve the first genetically engineered animal that people would eat: Salmon that can grow at twice the normal rate.

The developer of the salmon has been trying to get approval for a decade. But now the company seems to have submitted most or all of the data the FDA needs for analyzing whether the salmon are safe to eat, nutritionally equivalent to other salmon and safe for the environment, according to government and biotechnology industry officials. A public meeting to discuss the salmon may be held in the fall.

Some consumer and environmental groups are likely to raise objections to approval. Even within the FDA, there has been a debate about whether the salmon should be labeled as genetically engineered; genetically engineered crops are not labeled.

Approval of the salmon would help open a path for companies and scientists developing other genetically engineered animals, such as cattle resistant to mad-cow disease or pigs that could supply healthier bacon. After the salmon, next in line for possible approval would probably be the “enviropig,” developed at a Canadian university, which has less phosphorus pollution in its manure.

The salmon was developed by a company called AquaBounty Technologies and would be raised in fish farms. It is an Atlantic salmon that contains a growth-hormone gene from a chinook salmon and a genetic on-switch from the ocean pout, a distant relative of the salmon.

Normally, salmon do not make growth hormone in cold weather. But the pout’s on-switch keeps production of the hormone going year round. The result is salmon that can grow to market size in 16 to 18 months instead of three years, though the company says the modified salmon will not end up any bigger than a conventional fish.

“You don’t get salmon the size of the Hindenburg,” said Ronald Stotish, AquaBounty’s chief executive. “You can get to those target weights in a shorter time.”

AquaBounty, based in Waltham, Mass., and publicly traded in London, said last week that the FDA had signed off on five of the seven sets of data required to demonstrate that the fish is safe for consumption and for the environment.

“Perhaps in the next few months, we expect to see a final approval,” Stotish said.

He said it would take two or three years after approval for the salmon to reach supermarkets.

The FDA confirmed it was reviewing the salmon but, because of confidentiality rules, would not comment further.

Under a policy announced in 2008, the FDA is regulating genetically engineered animals as if they were veterinary drugs and using the rules for those drugs. And applications for approval of new drugs must be kept confidential by the agency.

Critics say the drug-evaluation process does not allow full assessment of the possible environmental impacts of genetically altered animals and also blocks public input.

Some government officials and industry executives said FDA officials had discussed internally whether the salmon could be labeled to give consumers the choice of avoiding them.

The government has opposed mandatory labeling of foods from genetically engineered crops and animals merely because genetic engineering was used. Foods must be labeled, it says, only if they are different in their nutritional properties or other characteristics.

Stotish, of AquaBounty, said his company was not against voluntary labeling, but the matter was not in its hands because it would be selling only fish eggs to fish farms, not grown salmon to the supermarket.

He said the company had submitted data to the FDA showing that its salmon was indistinguishable from nonengineered Atlantic salmon in terms of taste, color, vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, proteins and other nutrients.

“If there’s no material difference, then it would be misleading to require labeling,” Stotish said.