Several times over the past couple years I’ve written about the amazing potential of so-called “golden rice.” This is a genetically modified strain of rice that contains a relatively large amount of vitamin A. Normal rice contains vitamin A, but it is lost in the processing necessary to make rice edible. As a result, in areas where rice is a food staple, vitamin A deficiency is common. Upwards of 500,000 children go blind ever year, for example, due to vitamin A deficiency.
Dr. Ingo Potrykus managed to genetically modify a strain of rice so that it retains a vitamin A and has been working tirelessly to begin tests with the rice. Unlike other genetically modified organisms, this one will essentially be given away to farmers in the developing world. This would seem to be an outstanding development on all counts.
Not so for Greenpeace, however, which is waging what appears to be a largely religious vendetta against anything related to genetic engineering. Several weeks ago it attacked the golden rice effort saying it was just a public relations gimmick by the biotechnology industry which would do nothing to reduce the problem of vitamin A deficiency. Unfortunately, Greenpeace’s logic here is typical of the radical environmental movement. Benedikt Haerlin, International Coordinator of Greenpeace’s Genetic Engineering Campaign, has this to say about the golden rice initiative.
The Genetic Engineering (GE) industry claims vitamin A rice could save thousands of children from blindness and millions of malnourished people from vitamin A deficiency (VAD) related diseases.
However, a simple calculation based on the product developers’ own figures show 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.
Syngenta, one of the world’s leading GE companies and pesticide producers that owns many patents on the Golden Rice, claims one month of a delay in marketing Golden Rice would cause 50,000 children to go blind.
Greenpeace calculations show that an adult would have to eat at least 3.7 kilograms of dry weight rice, which results in about nine kilograms of cooked rice, to satisfy their daily need of vitamin A from Golden Rice.
This means a normal daily intake of 300 grams of rice would, at best, provide 8 percent of the vitamin A needed daily. A breast feeding woman would have to eat at least 6.3 kilograms in dry weight, converting to nearly 18 kilograms of cooked rice per day.
There is some controversy over these figures, but for the moment lets assume Greenpeace is correct in how much vitamin A will be available. Haerlin is essentially arguing that improving vitamin A consumption in the developing world is an all or nothing proposition — either scientists come up with rice that provides the complete recommended daily allowance of the vitamin or it do nothing at all. Since Greenpeace estimates that golden rice would only increase vitamin A intake by 8 percent, it is completely worthless in their view.
As Potrykus responded in an article of his own, this claim is absurd.
As I would assume you know, there is vast difference in the amount of vitamin A needed to reduce mortality, vs. that needed to prevent blindness, vs. that needed to prevent night-blindness and other like symptoms, vs. that which satisfies actual metabolic needs, vs. that which is equal to the recommended allowance, vs. that which might be considered for optimal intake, vs. that which might trigger toxicity symptoms. The vastness of those quantitative differences is further exaggerated in individuals whose metabolic need for this essential nutrient has been modified by an extended period of deprivation. Clearly in individuals whose diet is almost devoted of vitamin A, dietary intake at levels representing only a small fraction of the “recommended allowance” offers the potential to have a significant impact on both morbidity and mortality.
As Potrykus goes on to say, this is especially the case since golden rice will service in a complementary role to other efforts to fight vitamin A deficiency.
But are Greenpeace’s claims about bio availability accurate? If Greenpeace and other anti-GM activists have their way we might never know. Potrykus freely admits that just how much vitamin A is available to the human body is still an open issue and one that can only be resolved through small scale nutritional studies.
Unfortunately to do such a nutritional study, Potrykus will need to grow test beds of the rice and anti-GM activists have been destroying such crops around the world. The activists will apparently not make golden rice an exception to this policy. Greenpeace has said it will not rule out targeting small test fields of the GM rice for destruction.
Save the planet, turn your back on the developing world. Or as Potrykus warned Greenpeace,
If you plan to destroy test fields to prevent resposible testing and development of Golden Rice for humanitarian purposes, you will be accused of contributing to a crime against humanity.
Sources:
Greenpeace and Golden Rice. Ingo Potrykus, letter posted to AgBioView ListServ, February 15, 2001.
GE rice is fool’s gold. Benedikt Haerlin, Greenpeace, February 9, 2001.