The Counterfeit
Pledge of Golden Rice
There is now a possible alternative
other than carrots to receiving your beta-carotene
intake. It’s the magical genetically engineered (GE)
“Golden Rice.” Beta-carotene is a compound the body can
convert to Vitamin A, which further converts into a part
of your cones in your eye. Cones are responsible for
color vision and bright light. Without a good source of
Vitamin A in the diet, your body experiences Vitamin A
Deficiency (VAD), which is a malnutrition problem that
leads to vision problems. VAD affects millions of people
in poor countries, especially children and pregnant
women. Golden Rice has been presented as a quick fix to
VAD, but evidence shows that this is not the case. GE
rice is the most expensive, least developed and most
ecologically dangerous way to address VAD. Also, the
single-crop approach of GE rice may threaten food
security.
 Millions of dollars has been poured into
the research of GE rice, and more will be needed before
it stands a chance of becoming widely available. It
would be more cost effective to use these funds on
existing strategies such as promoting locally
sustainable agriculture and programs that educate poor
countries on diet diversification. Like other GMO’s, the
release of GE rice into the environment is a form of
pollution. Its environmental impact is unpredictable,
uncontrollable and irreversible. If Golden Rice were
introduces on a large scale it could worsen malnutrition
and undermine food security because it encourages a diet
that is based on one food. Instead, the encouraged diet
should consist of a variety of vitamin rich plants that
were once cheap and readily available. A diet consisting
of a variety of plants would take care of a wide array
of micronutrient deficiencies, not just VAD.
The biotech industry is using Golden
Rice to gain overall acceptance for GE foods. They claim
they have the solution for world hunger, while the real
causes of hunger and malnutrition, which are poverty and
lack of access to food, are never addressed. GE rice
could be available for planting as early as 2004. This
does not leave enough time to properly asses the impacts
it would have.
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