The False Promise of Genetically Engineered Rice

Von Hernandez / Manila Times 20feb01

Von Hernandez is Campaigns Director, Greenpeace Southeast Asia

News about “Golden Rice” first appeared in August 1999, when scientists announced they had succeeded in genetically engineering a rice variety to contain Beta-Carotene (or pro-Vitamin A), a compound that our body can convert into Vitamin A. The scientists said they hoped this genetically engineered (GE) rice would be an important tool to fight Vitamin A deficiency (VAD), a malnutrition problem that affects millions of people in poor countries, especially children and pregnant women. Last month, the first grains of this GE rice arrived at the Los Baños-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) for future field trials and breeding with local varieties.

GE rice has been presented as a quick and easy solution to VAD, but evidence shows that this is not the case. In the short term, GE rice is the most expensive, least developed, and most ecologically dangerous way to address VAD. In the long term, the single-crop approach of GE rice may be a serious threat to food security.

According to its developers, GE rice could be available for local planting in 2004 at the earliest. However, this estimate would not leave sufficient time to assess its local socio-economic, health, and environmental impacts. Since a variety of measures addressing the problem of Vitamin A deficiency exist today, VAD could potentially be eradicated through existing solutions even before such GE rice evaluations reached an advanced stage.

The problem is political will, not lack of solutions. Focusing on existing short- and long-term strategies would address the real issues of malnutrition while avoiding the problems associated with GE rice.

Moreover, calculations show that an adult would have to eat at least 3.7 kilos of dry weight rice (i.e. around nine kilos of cooked rice) to satisfy his/her daily need of vitamin A from Golden Rice (please see picture). In other words, a normal daily intake of 300 grams of Golden Rice would, at best, provide only eight percent of the vitamin A needed daily. These figures highlight the deliberate deception used by the biotech industry to promote the introduction and commercialization of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into the developing world particularly in Asia.

Even the Rockefeller Foundation, a major sponsor of the Vitamin A rice research project, recently admitted in a letter to Greenpeace that “the public relations uses of Golden Rice have gone too far.”

The problems of GE rice

1. Health and nutritional problems

GE rice is intended to replace existing rice varieties and, if successfully introduced, will be eaten in large quantities and might become the only staple food accessible to many. Since no health safety tests have been carried out on Vitamin A rice yet, the assessment will need to be rigorous and challenging, as it will have to ensure that no new allergenic properties or other unintended metabolic changes are introduced. In addition, the uptake and absorption of Pro-Vitamin A depend on many factors, including adequate intake of proteins, vitamin E, zinc, and fats. But poor people’s diets often lack fat and other key nutrients, so the Pro-Vitamin A available from GE rice could be excreted undigested by many.

GE rice is disconnected from the causes of malnutrition. Farmers’ own experiences of diversification show that there are many ways to address vitamin A deficiency in Asia without isolating the problem from socio-political realities. For example, the reintroduction of locally grown varieties of vegetables rich in micronutrients, including Pro-Vitamin A, has been successful in Bangladesh and Thailand. It should be pointed out that the industrial model of agriculture is seen by many as a reason for malnutrition and the lack of a diverse diet. According to the Genetic Resources Action International, a “market driven, industrial agriculture that genetic engineering is an extension of, has reduced agricultural biodiversity, and, as a result, dietary diversity, thus increasing micronutrient malnutrition among the poor.”

2. Patents on Vitamin A rice

In May 2000, GE rice inventors announced a deal under which AstraZeneca, a UK-based pharmaceuticals and biotech group, will license and distribute the crop. The multinational company announced it intended to sell GE rice commercially while allowing free distribution and use only to those farmers in developing countries whose yearly profit is lower than a specific ceiling.

A principal concern of GE rice is that it is patented by northern companies that do not allow GE seeds to be saved like traditional seeds. Farmers are required to buy new GE seed each year. But in the developing world, most household farms rely upon saved seed for the next year’s crop. The problem is more complex in this case because the GE rice inventors used a series of patents held by private companies. Legally binding deals with all these patent holders have to be arranged in order to prevent them from claiming licenses to the patents. Such claims may make GE rice much more expensive than expected.

3. Technical problems

No field tests have been carried out yet to assess the performance and stability of the genetic construct when combined with other rice varieties. It is a common observation that transgenic plants, while they may perform well in laboratories, fail in nature. Documented failures include Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soy beans, which showed splitting stems and up to 40 percent yield reduction under growth conditions with high soil temperatures. GE herbicide-tolerant tobacco plants also did not survive spraying with the herbicide in the field after surviving the spraying in the greenhouse.

4. Environmental impact of GE rice

It is unclear if Vitamin A rice would attract more pests because of its nutritional trait. But it must be assumed that its transgenes will escape into the environment with unknown consequences. Large scale growing of GE rice could lead to massive gene flow to wild and other locally unique varieties of rice and could contribute to the already alarming genetic uniformity of rice in Asia —and its negative impact on food security.

In Asia, where rice is the major staple, production is being confined to only a few varieties. MASIPAG warned recently, “This is a very dangerous situation for farmers and food security since it increases dependence on toxic chemicals and genetic engineers to help defend crops against inherent weaknesses of biological uniformity.” In the words of Devinder Sharma, president of the New Delhi-based Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security, “the golden rice in question is an ecological and health hazard. Nor is it the answer to the nutritional needs of the small producers and poverty-stricken masses in the south.

5. Acceptance of a yellow rice

The introduction of a yellow-colored rice could pose considerable acceptance problems with consumers and farmers. It could easily be stigmatized as the rice for the poor while the rich continue to eat the white rice. Ensuring acceptance would require massive and locally adapted educational and marketing campaigns in order to change consumer habits, thus further distracting agencies and groups already working on VAD from existing effective programs. The huge sums needed for such campaigns on Vitamin A rice could have a much broader and lasting effect on malnutrition if they were spent on diet diversification programs.

source: http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2001/feb/20/env/20010220env1.html 25feb01