Genetically Engineered Food: Failures of Greenpeace International
Hunger Artist Blog
June 16, 2007
Excerpt…
Greenpeace, an organization I generally respect and have contributed money to, really has its head up it's ass on the subject of genetically engineered food. At least that how it sounds on the subject of a GE form of rice that has been modified to produce an important precursor to vitamin A (beta carotene) which is critical to the development of eyesight in humans.
Golden rice was developed by Peter Beyer and Ingo Portrykus and seed would be distributed for free to farmers (earning less than $10K per year) in countries where vitamin A deficient diets are responsible for at least 500K cases of childhood blindness each year. But because of opposition by Greenpeace and other knee-jerk anti GMO types, it's been a hard sell. I suppose I might be less troubled by their opposition if it was based on sound reasoning but this hardly seems to be the case. Consider this explanation for opposing the distribution of Golden Rice taken from Greenpeace's web site.
The human food safety of GE rice is unknown. However, the environmental risk of GE rice is clear. Golden Rice could breed with wild and weedy relatives to contaminate wild rice forever. If there were any problems the clock could not be turned back.
When the risk is high, the potential consequences devastating, and the benefits unclear, precaution is called for.
Human food safety? This is idiotic and a non-issue. Beta carotene is found in thousands of plants many of which have been consumed by humans for tens of thousands of years. Carrots are loaded with beta carotene; should we suppress the cultivation of carrots?
And how is the potential escape of a gene for beta-carotene into stocks of wild rice a risk? Even if you take the position that the genome of a wild plant should not be allowed to become "infected" with genes from an agricultural type (an absurd position anyway since genes from even widely unrelated organisms are moving between one form and another via transfer by viruses) you'd be hard pressed to prove that the presence of beta carotene poses any kind of risk….
Full article at Hunger Artist Blog.
