[Lamplighter]

NY Times
AMY HARMON
August 24, 2013

Golden Rice: Lifesaver?

ONE bright morning this month, 400 protesters smashed down the high fences surrounding a field
in the Bicol region of the Philippines and uprooted the genetically modified rice plants growing inside.

Had the plants survived long enough to flower, they would have
betrayed a distinctly yellow tint in the otherwise white part of the grain.
That is because the rice is endowed with a gene from corn and another from a bacterium,
making it the only variety in existence to produce beta carotene, the source of vitamin A.
Its developers call it “Golden Rice.”
<snip>
They are driving the desire among some Americans for mandatory “G.M.O.” labels on food
with ingredients made from crops whose DNA has been altered in a laboratory.
And they have motivated similar attacks on trials of other genetically modified crops in recent years:
grapes designed to fight off a deadly virus in France,
wheat designed to have a lower glycemic index in Australia,
sugar beets in Oregon designed to tolerate a herbicide, to name a few.

And a looming decision by the Philippine government about whether to allow Golden Rice to be grown beyond
its four remaining field trials has added a new dimension to the debate over the technology’s merits.
Not owned by any company, Golden Rice is being developed by a nonprofit group
called the International Rice Research Institute with the aim of providing a new source of vitamin A
to people both in the Philippines, where most households get most of their calories from rice,
and eventually in many other places in a world where rice is eaten every day by half the population.

Lack of the vital nutrient causes blindness in a quarter-million to a half-million children each year.
It affects millions of people in Asia and Africa and so weakens the immune system that
some two million die each year of diseases they would otherwise survive.
<snip>
If Golden Rice is a Trojan horse, it now has some company.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is supporting the final testing of Golden Ricem
is also underwriting the development of crops tailored for sub-Saharan Africa,
like cassava that can resist the viruses that routinely wipe out a third of the harvest,
bananas that contain higher levels of iron and corn that uses nitrogen more efficiently.
Other groups are developing a pest-resistant black-eyed pea and a “Golden Banana”
that would also deliver vitamin A.

Beyond the fear of corporate control of agriculture, perhaps the most cited objection to G.M.O.’s is
that they may hold risks that may not be understood. The decision to grow or eat them relies,
like many other decisions, on a cost-benefit analysis.