Basic HTML Version
country has become a battleground for
the Golden Rice debate.
Greenpeace continues to err on the
side of caution, Pelegrina said, because
of environmental and safety issues that
could be caused by the introduction of
Golden Rice.
“There are cases of contamination that
have been documented in rice,” she said.
“As well as the possible dramatic impacts
to farmers, who will lose possible
markets for their exports if some of this
contaminated material is transported to
the European Union.”
The EU has a strict policy on GMOs and
closely monitors all such crops that enter
its borders. Currently, there are 50 GMO
crops authorized in the EU, including
different varieties of maize, cotton,
sugar beets, rapeseed and soybeans.
Most of these GMOs are imported then
processed for food and feed end uses.
Currently, only one GMO is authorized for
cultivation in the EU, a pest-resistant maize
variety calledMON810.
Although cautious about GMOs,
Greenpeace promotes other solutions
“I was inspired by my promise to
make this technology available to the
poor,” Potrykus said. “I have invested
a considerable part of my scientific
career in producing provitamin-A rice
with the intention that I wanted to help
reduce vitamin A deficiency with all its
consequences.”
Potrykus and Beyer licensed
their discovery to Syngenta for
commercialization with one important
stipulation: Syngenta had to offer the
crop free of charge for humanitarian use
in the developing world, where about
3.5 billion people derive 80 per cent of
their daily calories from rice.
“Many of those people have hardly
anything else in their diet,” Moore
said, explaining that although several
vitamin-A-rich vegetables are grown in
the developing world, they are often
expensive and too low in calories to be
a cost-effective source of nutrition. “If
they have to choose between rice and
vegetables, and they choose vegetables,
they’d starve to death.”
By 2004, Syngenta abandoned its
research and donated the information
to the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board,
which is still operating the project today.
Due to its GMO status, Golden Rice
spawned a wave of fierce opposition
from anti-GMO and environmental
organizations, including Greenpeace,
GMWatch and Friends of the Earth.
“At present, our position is that
we are against the use of Golden
Rice,” said Wilhelmina Pelegrina, a
senior campaigner for Greenpeace
International based in the Philippines,
an island country many Golden Rice
boosters see as a likely location for the
crop’s debut.
“We are almost certainly going to go
to the Philippines before anywhere else,”
Dubock said.
The Philippines is an ideal location, he
added, because the country has already
registered several GMO crops and,
between the International Rice Research
Institute and the Philippine Rice Research
Institute, possesses a tremendous
amount of rice expertise. As a result, the
to micronutrient deficiencies and
malnourishment in the developing world
that aim to address the underlying causes
of these problems.
“It’s more of the long-term solutions
that we’re advocating,” Pelegrina said.
“It’s really looking at access to diverse
diet and promoting diversity, especially
ecological agriculture.”
Ecological agriculture involves
using bio-diverse farming practices or
intercropping, organic pest controls
and natural fertilizers in place of
monocultures, pesticides and
synthetic fertilizers. Greenpeace
maintains that these practices could
improve access to diverse diets among
both rural and urban communities to
combat micronutrient deficiencies,
including VAD.
The Canadian Biotechnology Action
Network (CBAN) takes a similar stance
on the issue. Taarini Chopra, a researcher
with CBAN, said supporters of Golden
Rice are missing the big picture.
continued on page 44
The Food Issue
2014
grainswest.com
17
ingo Potrykus (left) and Peter Beyer are the two scientists who created Golden rice.
since its inception, the rice has been a lightning rod of controversy. the rice was
made to combat vitamin-a deficiency.