GE rice threatens biodiversity
16/03/2005 — It was a great sales pitch: adopt
this genetically engineered rice, and it'll
save millions of children from blindness!
It will end Vitamin A deficiency. They called
it "Golden Rice." But if you queried
their claims, or had concerns about possible
genetic contamination of a global staple food,
you were an environmental extremist who cared
more about trees than children. It was, and
is, fool's gold.
"Golden Rice" is a technical failure.
It won't overcome malnutrition. Worse, it
is drawing funding and attention away from
the real solutions to combat the very real
problem of vitamin A deficiency.
Vitamin A is essential to humans. It has several
functions in the human body and is important
for eyesight. Vitamin A deficiency can lead
to blindness and death, and is a severe problem
for many countries in the global south.
More hype than substance
GE golden rice is fool's gold because an
adult would have to eat at least 12 times
the normal intake of 300 grams to get the
daily recommended amount of provitamin A.
Golden Rice was presented in 2000 as a rice
variety that was genetically engineered in
a laboratory to produce pro-vitamin A (beta-carotene).
The media hype was more robust than the science,
however, and our analysis revealed that people
would need to consume 12 times more rice than
normal to satisfy the minimum daily adult
requirements of Vitamin A. Subsequent studies
have questioned the very notion that Golden
Rice would be effective in addressing Vitamin
A deficiency.
"Industry tries to sell Golden Rice as
a magic solution. Their strategy is misleading
the public, they are oversimplifying the actual
problems in combating vitamin A deficiency
and try to turn down other, more effective
solutions," says Christoph Then, Greenpeace
International GE campaigner. "The Golden
Rice project simply aims to help industry
to gain support for their controversial GE-food
in markets such as India and Europe".
Close reading of the Golden Rice publications
reveals that technical problems were glossed
over. The initial reports did not fully, nor
accurately, describe the type of pro-vitamin
A present in Golden Rice. Other factors limiting
the effectiveness of Golden Rice were ignored.
The human food safety of GE rice is unknown.
However, the environmental risk of GE rice
is clear. Golden Rice could breed with wild
and weedy relatives to contaminate wild rice
forever. If there were any problems the clock
could not be turned back.
When the risk is high, the potential consequences
devastating, and the benefits unclear, precaution
is called for.
Real solutions
Since Golden Rice was presented in 2000,
solutions such as increased food diversity,
vitamin supplements and home gardening have
proven to be working solutions for Vitamin
A deficiency. While Vitamin A deficiency is
still a serious problem in countries such
as Bangladesh, these solutions helped to virtually
eliminate Vitamin-A related blindness in children.
There are also traditional rice varieties
that could combat Vitamin A deficiency.
"GE rice could, if introduced on a large
scale, exacerbate malnutrition and undermine
food security because it encourages a diet
based on a single industrial staple food rather
than upon the reintroduction of the many vitamin-rich
food plants with high nutritional value that
are cheap and already available." says
Professor Klaus Becker, from University of
Hohenheim, Germany.
The promoters of Golden Rice will shortly
be presenting new research, claiming that
new versions will have ten times the content
of beta-carotene as the first generation.
But despite five years of propaganda about
potential benefits, Golden Rice has failed
to deliver real results. There are better
answers to the problem of Vitamin A deficiency
- solutions that are cheaper, more effective,
more sustainable for the environment, and
free of risk to one of the world's most important
foods. The only problem for the GE industry
is that the only profit in those solutions
is for the poor.
