The perfect bowl of rice?
Broadcast Date: March 9, 2001
"Golden rice" may be the answer for the biotech industry still reeling from the onslaught of negative press. Recently negative studies have pointed to GM corn killing monarch caterpillars, indigestible StarLink corn ending up in taco shells, and worldwide protests especially in Europe. As a result, the biotech industry is banking on golden rice to be its saviour, says CBC's Bob Carty.Golden rice has been genetically modified to contain high levels of beta-carotene, which the body can convert into vitamin A. That modification is done using genes from a daffodil, a pea, a bacterium and a virus. As many as 500,000 children go blind each year due to vitamin A deficiency, and this new rice is being touted as biotechnology at its best.
But its detractors say the root of the problem is not the production of rice but its distribution and access, pointing to the tonnes of food going to waste while millions go hungry. They also point out that a child would have to eat 15 pounds of golden rice a day to satisfy the minimum requirement of vitamin A.
Anti-golden rice forces question the biotech industry's motives. They shake their heads at the $100 million spent in the development of golden rice, not to mention the $50 million ad campaign, when vitamin A deficiency can be remedied with something as simple as cod liver oil.
The perfect bowl of rice?
• Golden rice, if successful, could become a model for co-operation between public and private sectors in pursuit of human welfare. The inventors are not claiming property rights to golden rice nor are the biotech companies, including Monsanto, Syngenta AG and Bayer AG, whose technology they used to create it.• Ingo Potrykus, of the Institute for Plant Sciences, The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Peter Beyer of the Centre for Applied Biosciences, University of Freiburg, Germany, are the inventors of golden rice.
• More than 70 patents were involved in creating golden rice.
• The $100 million spent on developing golden rice came from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, the European Union under a European Community Biotech Programme and the Swiss Federal Office for Education and Science.
• Golden rice is not yet (2005) available for local planting and consumption.
• In September 2000, Kraft Foods recalled its taco shells after confirming they contained a genetically engineered corn not approved for human consumption. The GM corn in question, StarLink, had been approved for animal feed but not for humans.
The perfect bowl of rice?
Medium: Radio
Program: This Morning
Broadcast Date: March 9, 2001
Host: Ralph Benmergui
Producer: Bob Carty
Duration: 16:38
Last updated:
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A point I never heard brought up in this article was that Vitamin a is readily present in Palm Oil, which is a staple of almost any person in Southeast Asia, poor or rich.
I think this is a classic example of how limited these scientists vision is. They think they can 'fix' poverty and malunrtirion with GMO products? Are they aware of a number of readily available vitamin a sources in just about any regions diet? Perhaps instead of devoting their life to studying small facets of the arcane, they should look around, listen to those they wish to help, and learning a bit about this world we all live in.
I suspect any 'deficiencies' in poor people's diets in Southeast Asia are due to chemical pollutants from industry and war, and the limiting economic factors of poverty. GMO is not the answer, obviously.
So, again, Palm Oil, a staple in most Southeast Asian diets, contains more than enough vitamin A. Why was this point not addressed?
Submitted by: Chuck