“Genetically engineered crops could save many millions from starvation and malnutrition — if they can be freed from excessive regulation,” declares an article in Nature (not available online). Ingo Potrykus, chairman of the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board, explains:
Golden rice is a series of varieties modified with two genes (phytoene synthase and phytoene double-desaturase) to produce up to 35 micrograms of vitamin A precursor per gram of edible rice. Within the normal diet of rice-dependent poor populations, it could provide sufficient vitamin A to reduce substantially the 6,000 deaths a day due to vitamin A deficiency, and to save the sight of several hundred thousand people per year.
None of the existing varieties of rice has even low levels of the vitamin A precursor in the part that is eaten, so conventional breeding cannot increase it. Golden rice was possible only with genetic engineering.
Getting approval for a genetically-modified crop usually “takes about ten times more money and ten years longer,” he writes to bring to market than for a non-genetically modified one. (Golden Rice will be on the market in 2012, thirteen years after it was ready in the lab.) The effect is that a few companies control the field and they focus on the most money-making crops, and not on those that could change the “food security” of the poor.
July 29th, 2010 | 1:30 pm
I hope I can be forgiven for having read Mr. Carter’s previous post and then clicking back to the main blog and seeing this headline and thinking it was a review of a particular author’s work… That was either brilliant or serendipitous.
July 29th, 2010 | 1:37 pm
Serendipitous.
July 29th, 2010 | 2:30 pm
We should absolutely *not* be toying with nature in this way. It’s dangerous in some ways we suspect and in other ways we can’t yet suspect. There are better ways to nourish the poor of the world.
July 30th, 2010 | 12:21 pm
Dear Irenaeus,
The genetic engineering they did to get golden rice is less problematic and more straightforward than the breeding that was done to get current crops of wheat, corn, and barley. I’ll let you off the hook for the dangers “we” can’t yet suspect, but could you possibly be more explicit about the dangers you’re expecting? I know a fair bit about genetic engineering and I’m at a loss to know what you’re talking about. Are you afraid these two genes might get into the neighboring weeds through some bizarre pollination accident and…make them produce *vitamin A*?! Or do you object to humans “messing” with plants in general? These aren’t human embryonic stem cells we’re talking about.
July 30th, 2010 | 1:11 pm
I’m for some types of genetic engineering for food and against others. Certain types are complex in their effects.
We need to be careful about knee jerk reactions. Food security could have an incredibly positive effect worldwide and I’m not willing to forego it because of what we “don’t know.”
Factory farming, for all its downsides, has been very positive overall. People who aren’t (a) wealthy, or (b) farmers, get to eat meat at a reasonable price because of it and overall food prices have gone down. Genetic engineering, safe & responsible, could have a similar positive effect.
July 30th, 2010 | 6:51 pm
It will be wonderful when hunger is eradicated, which is of course what the Lord did at the feeding of the five thousand. And if this new kind of rice can help that, then maybe it’s splendid. But missing from the argument is who owns the patent to this new seed?
It’s Syngenta AG. Syngenta is a Swiss company with a history of international environmental legal actions and spats with Monsanto in US courts over transgenic corn and cotton. By a series of agreements, subsistence farmers can grow “golden rice” without paying a licensing fee to Syngenta. But should the rice be widely cultivated and grown commercially, pushing out other kinds of rice (because you can’t plant different kinds of crop in the same paddy—at least not like this) the profits for Syngenta will be formidable.
I think that there are at least two problems here—apart from the problem of one company controlling the world rice crop. First, the Supreme Court made a huge mistake when they allowed genes to be patented. Forms of life just shouldn’t be made somebody’s property. Right, makes sense to patent a Poland China hog? No. Not. Secondly, “golden rice” was developed by a Swiss university professor working in Swiss university. When professors, in the employ of the public, do what they are paid to do, teach and research, their products should be offered to the public freely. Yep. I think professors have a lot of nerve to profit from their books. And what comes out of public universities belongs to the public. So if anybody should “own” the patent to this rice (which shouldn’t be owned at all) it should be the Swiss people. But maybe we have a hint here, “golden rice,” well golden for who? The poor of the world? Maybe. Syngenta? Yeah. You bet.
Oh, and how great is our factory farming? You tell me. Chicken farmers in debt until they die to the big chicken producers (yep, this is a problem here in Middle Tennessee), the food industry–from feedlot to bagged Cheetos–built upon fraudulently low corn prices, potentially dangerous food (we have a slaughter house industry that aggressively resists significant inspection), the towns of middle America collapsing into sink holes of meth and unemployment and an economy where it’s cheaper to buy a happy meal at the local fast food chain than a bag of carrots or a half gallon of milk. That list sounds, well, healthy?
Good for the country? Not to me. Sounds pretty problematic. Plant your own garden. Buy your produce when you can at the local farmers’ market. And go in with some neighbors and buy part of a steer from a farmer you know. No. I’m not kidding. And yes, I do.
Oh, and by the way. Who are some of the big guys behind “golden rice”? The Ford Foundation. And The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Aren’t these the same folks who are evangelizing the world with their own form of “family planning.”? Yep. Same ones. Is there something odd here? Aren’t the goals of those foundations population control, i.e., eventual population leveling off and reduction? Ah, yea. But if “golden rice” really does what it’s supposed to do, won’t it lead to population increase through greater health and less morbidity? I would hope so. Is there a part of the puzzle missing here? Seems so to me.
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