Transgenic Golden Rice, once hailed as a dietary breakthrough

I wonder if the actual issues with this rice are similar to the miracle rice programs of the '70s where western aid programs introduced commercial strains of rice to traditional farmers in Indonesia and other SE Asian countries. These strains promised higher yield but at the cost of buying in commercial fertilisers and herbicides. The side effect of higher rice yield was disappearance of fish and companion/accidental crops that would typically grow in the rice paddies, along with poisoning of rivers downstream due to excess nutrients from fertilised rice paddies.

I was scared of GM crops when they first started getting news attention, but I&#x27;ve flipped now. Quoting a Greenpeace representative, the article writes:<p>&gt; “GM crops have never been proven safe,” Pelegrina asserted.<p>This might be true in some way, but what kind of proof are they looking for? What evidence has been presented that GM crops are <i>unsafe</i>? <i>Proving</i> the absence of something (health risk) is quite hard. On the other hand, GM crops have been consumed by many people for many years now and haven&#x27;t found any large scale deleterious effects.

The solution for any nutritional deficiencies is not the &quot;fortification&quot; of the staple foods.<p>I believe that the future of food sources is in genetically-engineered organisms, but I am dismayed by the fact that all the current attempts of genetic modifications have stupid goals.<p>The &quot;fortification&quot; of staple foods is extremely stupid, because the amount of staple food that is consumed varies widely with sex, size, age and physical activity and it is not proportional to the daily requirements for various vitamins or minerals. The amount of vitamins ingested from &quot;fortified&quot; food is always either insufficient or wasted as excessive.<p>The staple foods are required to provide only proteins and&#x2F;or fats and&#x2F;or carbohydrates. For everything else there are specific sources that are needed only in small quantities, so they usually do not add up to a major part of the cost of the food.<p>The daily intake of vitamin A can be obtained for instance from 100 grams of carrots, which in Europe, where I live, cost much less than 10 cents, so they can be afforded by anyone. In other parts of the world, where carrots are less common, there are various vegetables with similar properties, e.g. sweet potatoes and many others.<p>If they have vitamin A deficiency in their population, the solution is not buying more expensive yellow rice, but teaching everyone which is the amount of the cheapest locally available vegetable that is a suitable source of beta-carotene, which must be eaten daily.

&quot;Greenpeace Southeast Asia campaigner Wilhelmina Pelegrina said in a statement. Greenpeace joined MASIPAG, a farmers’ association, and other organizations and individuals in challenging the planting permit. “GM crops have never been proven safe,” Pelegrina asserted.&quot;<p>Well, you can&#x27;t prove a negative.<p>I actually wonder how high the acceptance rate for this rice in Asia is. White rice is one of the foundations of their culture. And this rice is not white!

Since you can never be 100.0% sure about anything, the Precautionary Principal always results in deciding not to do something.<p>This is why people only apply it to things they don&#x27;t want to do.

I find it ironic that people here assume the country is acting in good faith. For when you read the article in question and know some cultural background of the country - more stock of rice would decrease the price of rice hurting the current rice farmers and decreasing the value of farm land, rice brokers, etc. it’s a real complicated issue where even if you go get milled rice you’ll get rocks thrown in as it increases the weight by 5-15%.<p>This isn’t any fear of gmo risks, but an act to protect the status quo.

I&#x27;m not really sure if it applies to this case, but the worse thing with GMO is that when you start using them, you are not free anymore. Like using a SaaS software.<p>Usually you can use your own seeds from your production for your next batch. But GMO plants are supposed to produce sterile seeds that you can&#x27;t reuse. And in fact you wouldn&#x27;t even be allowed to, as it is the intellectual property of the chemical company producer.<p>So, farmers will have to buy and depend on a company for the seeds that they have to use at every season...

AFAIK vitamin A deficiency is a recent issue, due to the increased consumption of white rice at the expense of brown rice, which was the traditional way of eating rice for centuries (except among the elite, which had other sources of vitamin A thanks to a more diversified food supply than subsistence farmers).<p>Golden rice is yet another technological “solution” to a social problem, and unsurprisingly it&#x27;s also failing for other social issues (fear of GMOs)…

Was this entirely about the safety of the rice and not the intellectual property issues? That always seemed like a more serious issue with these.

<p><pre><code> Philippine (sic) </code></pre> ... if you must use the country name as an adjective, but usually it is better to choose one of the following:<p><i>Filipino</i> for male person, the language (if you do not know it is called <i>Tagalog</i> ), and as a default adjective for most other nouns.<p><i>Filipina</i> for female person.

Been furious about this one for years. When the alternative is death and&#x2F;or going blind who the fuck cares if there’s side effects? No one is saying it should end up in American grocery stores without proper testing but it could save and improve millions of lives around the world. For those who don’t know Greenpeace is essentially leading the campaign against GR via millions in “Zero GMO” funding. That kind of mindset won’t last long once wealthy nations start experiencing crop shortages caused by CC. Maize production will be first.

Weird to have a professional article start five sentences with &quot;But...&quot; in such a short article. I do sometimes too, but it&#x27;s a bit grating when done so many times.

&gt; required the government to follow the so-called precautionary principle<p>Someone should make a version of the meme with the death going door to door with a bloodied scythe but with the figure of nassim taleb instead.