GE "Golden Rice" Propaganda Denounced as a Hoax

Genetically Engineered Rice Promoters 'have gone too far'
Special report: GM debate

Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Saturday February 10, 2001
The Guardian (UK)

Claims by the biotech industry and some US politicians that genetically
engineered "golden rice" would save the sight of 500,000 children a year are
exaggerated, according to the Rockefeller Foundation, which is funding the
rice's development. The project, which has been used worldwide by
supporters of genetically modified crops as a justification for the technology,
appears likely to generate only a fraction of the additional vitamin A intake
it once promised. Vitamin A helps prevent eye disease.

If consumers were on a diet of 300g (11oz) of the GM rice a day - the
average consumption of an Asian adult - it would provide only 8% of the
required daily intake of the vitamin, according to independent scientists.

An adult would, in effect, have to eat 9kg of cooked rice (the equivalent of
3.75kg of uncooked rice) a day to satisfy the required intake and a pregnant
woman would need twice that amount.

The Rockefeller Foundation says that the public relations campaign based on
golden rice has "gone too far".

Syngenta, the agribusiness company which owns many of the patents on the
rice, has in the past claimed that a single month of marketing delay would
cause 50,000 children to go blind.

The main deficiency problem is found in India, Bangladesh, Indonesia,
Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines where the lack of vitamin A in a rice
diet causes childhood blindness and up to 1m deaths a year. Adding
beta-carotene to rice, which the body turns into vitamin A, turns it yellow,
hence the name golden rice.

The rice's development has provided a powerful propaganda tool for the GM
industry. The then US president Bill Clinton said last year: "If we could
get more of this golden rice, which is a genetically modified strain of rice
especially rich in vitamin A, out to the developing world, it could save
4,000 lives a day, people that are malnourished and dying."

A number of bio-tech firms, including Syngenta and Monsanto, were credited
with licensing patents on golden rice which would allow the technology to
"be made available free of charge for humanitarian uses in any developing
nation".

Charlie Kronick of Greenpeace said: "It is clear that the GM industry has
been making false claims about golden rice. It is nonsense to think anyone
would or could eat this much rice, and there is still no proof that it can
provide any significant vitamin benefits anyway.

"Our view is that the billions of pounds that has been spent developing this
rice and the false hopes it has raised has diverted valuable resources away
from more sensible ways of tackling VAD deficiency.

"Far from saving children's sight, 'golden rice' is preventing other more
certain methods being developed."

In response to a report by Vandana Shiva, an Indian campaigner against GM
foods, Rockefeller Foundation spokesman Gordon Conway said: "First it should
be stated that we do not consider golden rice to be the solution to the
vitamin A deficiency problem. Rather it provides an excellent complement to
fruits, vegetables and animal products in diets, and to various fortified
foods and vitamin supplements."

He said that for poor families lacking, for example, 10%, 20% or 50% of the
required daily intake of vitamin A, golden rice could be useful, although
even the best lines of rice produced by the bio-tech companies, reported in
the journal Science, could contribute only 15% to 20% of the daily
requirement.

He added: "I agree with Dr Shiva that the public relations uses of golden
rice have gone too far.

"The industry's advertisements and the media in general seem to forget that
it is a research product that needs considerable further development before
it will be available to farmers and consumers."

Mr Conway added, however, that he still thought that golden rice has the
potential to make an important contribution to reducing vitamin A
deficiency.

********************
Greenpeace Demands False Biotech Advertising be Removed from
TV Report & Letter: www.greenpeace.ca 9 Feb 2001) (Toronto) Greenpeace is
filing a complaint with Advertising Standards Canada demanding that
misleading biotech industry advertisements be withdrawn from broadcast. The
Council for Biotech Information's ads say that "Golden rice could help
prevent blindness and infection in millions of children" but recent
scientific evidence shows that this is not the case. A Greenpeace report,
released today, shows that the genetically engineered (GE) rice provides so
little vitamin A that an adult would have to eat 10 pounds (dry weight) of
rice a day to meet recommended allowances. A two year old child would need
to eat seven pounds per day. "It is shameful that the biotech industry is
using starving children to promote a dubious product," said Michael Khoo of
Greenpeace. "This isn't about solving childhood blindness, it's about
solving biotech's public relations problem." In a recent letter to
Greenpeace, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, which initially
funded development of the GE rice, expressed his concern that the biotech
industry's promotion of vitamin A rice has "gone too far" and is misleading
the public and media. He adds that "we do not consider golden rice the
solution to the Vitamin A deficiency problem." Even the scientist who
developed golden rice, Dr. Ingo Potrykus, has admitted there is not a single
published study showing that the human body can convert the beta-carotene in
GE rice to vitamin A. This is not the first time the biotech industry has
been caught with false advertising. In 1998, Monsanto was forced to withdraw
a similar European TV commercial after leaders of 23 African countries
stated to the United Nations that they "Strongly object that the image of
the poor and hungry from our countries is being used by giant multinational
corporations. For more information
contact Michael Khoo @ Greenpeace: 416 597 8408x3017 or 416 569 8408.
Report and letter to the ASF available @ www.greenpeace.ca