There are many problems of GE rice:

1. Health and Nutritional problems-no health or safety tests have been done on Vitamin A rice; uptake of beta-carotene depends on many things, including adequate intake of proteins, Vitamin E, zinc and especially fats/oils. Poor people’s diets often lack fat and other key nutrients, therefore the beta carotene of GE rice would travel through their systems undigested. GE rice will also destroy local varieties. Reintroduction of native vegetation that is rich in micronutrients has already been successful in areas such as Bangladesh and Thailand.

2. Patents on Golden Rice-patented by northern companies who do not allow seeds to be saved form year to year like traditional farming. In developing countries, farms rely on saved seeds. This will become expensive to both the people and the health of the land.

3. Technical Problems-only a few grains of rice exist in the lab and no field tests have been done to assess the performance and stability of the genetic construction when combined with other rice varieties.

4. Environmental Impact of GE rice-transgenes will escape to environment with unknown consequences to locally unique varieties. This will increase the dependency on toxic chemicals and genetic engineers to help defend crops against super weeds and bugs. (Greenpeace)

“Genetically engineered (GE) rice-such as the now famous Vitamin A or ‘Golden Rice’ –is being heavily promoted as a solution to hunger and malnutrition. Yet these promotional campaigns are clouding the real issues of poverty and control over resources, and serving to fast-track acceptance of GE crops in developing countries…Vitamin A rice is a techno-fix to the problems of the poor decided upon and developed, without consultation, by scientists from the North.”

-Joint statement to the press, June 2, 2000, by three farmer organizations from Southeast Asia.

In the arrogant, corporate world of the United States, the views of the European Union (EU) on the topic of GMO policy and regulation are “backwards.” This is due to the fact that U.S. corporations looking to patent GMOs are only interested in economic gain, with no regards to possible human consequence. On a consumer level, the EU has listened to its citizens and has come to the realization that GMOs could pose possible detrimental human health effects. They have taken precautionary measures that are necessary, while the United States continues to patent and produce GMOs with no safety standards. You may be asking yourself, why does the U.S. think the EU is “backwards,” when it seems we’re the ones with the “backward” morals?

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