Golden Rice...food police say no way...sorry kids...

[billc]

golden Rice, a genetically modified rice, could prevent blindness due to vitamin A deficiency in the third world ...food police say, no way...better they go blind...

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/08/27/golden-rice-anti-gmo-extremists-refuse-to-let-you-decide/

What if one of the biggest problems in the developing world was a lack of vitamin A? And what if you could engineer a crop that was a staple in most of that world that would provide sufficient vitamin A to prevent certain diseases, conditions and death:

Lack of the vital nutrient causes blindness in a quarter-million to a half-million children each year. It affects millions of people in Asia and Africa and so weakens the immune system that some two million die each year of diseases they would otherwise survive.
​

You’d be a hero right? You’d be hailed as someone who has vastly improved the lives and chances for millions.
Unless you ask Greenpeace.

Greenpeace, for one, dismisses the benefits of vitamin supplementation through G.M.O.’s and has said it will continue to oppose all uses of biotechnology in agriculture. As Daniel Ocampo, a campaigner for the organization in the Philippines, put it, “We would rather err on the side of caution.”
​

How will they “err on the side of caution?” By denying you a choice:
One bright morning this month, 400 protesters smashed down the high fences surrounding a field in the Bicol region of the Philippines and uprooted the genetically modified rice plants growing inside.
Had the plants survived long enough to flower, they would have betrayed a distinctly yellow tint in the otherwise white part of the grain. That is because the rice is endowed with a gene from corn and another from a bacterium, making it the only variety in existence to produce beta carotene, the source of vitamin A. Its developers call it “Golden Rice.”

 

[arnisador]

There is huge potential for GMOs to alleviate hunger and malnutrition but the anti-science crowd is in a panic over them despite the lengthy safety record. In fairness Monsanto is at least as evil as any other large company but that's no reason to deny Africa and elsewhere the benefits of these crops.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

1 word: Bees.

 

[granfire]

I think I wait until somebody not named 'hotair' talks about it.

GMOs are still new, we really do not know what we have started. And Monsanto is worse than the devil!

Just to cover the whole enchilada.

From Wiki:

Initial analyses of the potential nutritional benefits of golden rice suggested consumption of golden rice would not eliminate the problems of vitamin A deficiency, but should be seen as a complement to other methods of vitamin A supplementation.[SUP][23][/SUP][SUP][24][/SUP] Since then, improved strains of golden rice have been developed containing sufficient provitamin A to provide the entire dietary requirement of this nutrient to people who eat about 75g of golden rice per day.[SUP][4][/SUP]
In particular, since carotenes are hydrophobic, there needs to be a sufficient amount of fat present in the diet for golden rice (or most other vitamin A supplements) to be able to alleviate vitamin A deficiency. In that respect, it is significant that vitamin A deficiency is rarely an isolated phenomenon, but usually coupled to a general lack of a balanced diet (see also Vandana Shiva's arguments below). The RDA levels accepted in developed countries are far in excess of the amounts needed to prevent blindness.[SUP][4][/SUP] Moreover, this claim referred to an early cultivar of golden rice; one bowl of the latest version provides 60% of RDA for healthy children.[SUP][25][/SUP]

Vandana Shiva, an Indian anti-GMO activist, argued the problem was not that the crop had any particular deficiencies, but that there were potential problems with poverty and loss of biodiversity in food crops. These problems are aggravated by the corporate control of agriculture via control of genetically modified organisms. By focusing on a narrow problem (vitamin A deficiency), Shiva argued, the golden rice proponents were obscuring the larger issue of a lack of broad availability of diverse and nutritionally adequate sources of food.[SUP][40][/SUP] Other groups argued that a varied diet containing foods rich in beta carotene such as sweet potato, leafy green vegetables and fruit would provide children with sufficient vitamin A.[SUP][41][/SUP] However Keith West of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has argued that foodstuffs containing Vitamin A are either unavailable, or only available at certain seasons, or that they are too expensive for poor families in underdeveloped countries.[SUP][15][/SUP]
Because of lacking real-world studies and uncertainty about how many people will use golden rice, WHO malnutrition expert Francesco Branca concludes "giving out supplements, fortifying existing foods with vitamin A, and teaching people to grow carrots or certain leafy vegetables are, for now, more promising ways to fight the problem".[SUP][42][/SUP]

 

[billc]

Actually, Monsanto wasn't mentioned in the article but a smaller independent food company was...

Those that oppose this cite “big Agriculture” as one reason to oppose GMO. But this isn’t a product of “Big Ag”:

Not owned by any company, Golden Rice is being developed by a nonprofit group called the International Rice Research Institute with the aim of providing a new source of vitamin A to people both in the Philippines, where most households get most of their calories from rice, and eventually in many other places in a world where rice is eaten every day by half the population.
​

And besides, they claim, there are other foods these people can eat and, as usual, provide a overly simple answer to a complex problem:

” … critics who suggest encouraging poor families to simply eat fruits and vegetables that contain beta carotene disregard the expense and logistical difficulties that would thwart such efforts.
​

The controversy over golden rice typifies the arguments in general about genetically modified crops. Rife with agendas and politics, short on actual scientific fact:

 

[granfire]

There is huge potential for GMOs to alleviate hunger and malnutrition but the anti-science crowd is in a panic over them despite the lengthy safety record. In fairness Monsanto is at least as evil as any other large company but that's no reason to deny Africa and elsewhere the benefits of these crops.

many of the regions pointed out in read on the map are not known for rice consumption.
What do they do?

(pass out condoms and BC to the poor, reduces poverty and poor kids....)

 

[billc]

I think I wait until somebody not named 'hotair' talks about it.

You don't have to wait, if you look at the article, they are discussing the issue written in the the New York Times...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/sunday-review/golden-rice-lifesaver.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0


Besides, the New York Times is hardly a reputable source anymore...

 

[granfire]

Actually, Monsanto wasn't mentioned in the article but a smaller independent food company was...

Well, you mention GMOs and one has to point out that Monsanto is the Devil....just goes hand in hand.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

There is huge potential for GMOs to alleviate hunger and malnutrition but the anti-science crowd is in a panic over them despite the lengthy safety record. In fairness Monsanto is at least as evil as any other large company but that's no reason to deny Africa and elsewhere the benefits of these crops.

There is a difference between old school genetic tinkering, and what Monsanto does.
Penn & Teller did a thing on GMO products, cited a famous scientist whose work helped feed millions. That's all good stuff. We can produce hardier foods, more nutritious ones, and feed people.

The problem is that companies like Monsanto don't follow the procedures that their predecessors did. Rather than test test test in super secure ways, they dump barely tested highly modified seed with RoundUp built in on the market, and wait to see what happens. Nature is incredibly complex. There are legitimate serious concerns that some of these super GMO plants are impacting necessary critters like the bees. There are reasons why most countries besides the US are shunning these new strains, and much of it has to do with the poor science in use.

We need higher standards and need to hold these companies to them. We can safely feed people, without doing the damage we're currently doing to our future.

 

[Steve]

LOL... well, guys, Monsanto IS the devil. GMO isn't the issue, though. We need to be able to distinguish between the issue at hand and the business practices of the GMO mafia.

 

[arnisador]

LOL... well, guys, Monsanto IS the devil. GMO isn't the issue, though. We need to be able to distinguish between the issue at hand and the business practices of the GMO mafia.

Exactly--GMOs are safe for humans to eat. That doesn't mean that Monsanto's business practices are good for the environment. But GMOs themselves have great potential to do great good.

A long but excellent article on a very particular case here in the U.S. and some related cases:
A Race to Save the Orange by Altering Its DNA

They talk about cases other than the orange, including a frost-resistant tomato with a gene from a fish inserted in it:

There also appeared to be an abiding belief that a plant would take on the identity of the species from which its new DNA was drawn, like the scientist in the movie “The Fly” who sprouted insect parts after a DNA-mixing mistake with a house fly.


Asked if tomatoes containing a gene from a fish would “taste fishy” in a question on a 2004 poll conducted by the Food Policy Institute at Rutgers University that referred to one company’s efforts to forge a frost-resistant tomato with a gene from the winter flounder, fewer than half correctly answered “no.” A fear that the genetic engineering of food would throw the ecosystem out of whack showed in the surveys too.


Mr. Kress’s researchers, in turn, liked to point out that the very reason genetic engineering works is that all living things share a basic biochemistry: if a gene from a cold-water fish can help a tomato resist frost, it is because DNA is a universal code that tomato cells know how to read. Even the most distantly related species — say, humans and bacteria — share many genes whose functions have remained constant across billions of years of evolution.

They're trying to protect oranges with a gene from asparagus. Would that be better than what is happening now? Well:

Southern Gardens had lost 700,000 trees trying to control the disease, more than a quarter of its total. The forecast for the coming spring harvest was dismal. The approval to use more pesticide on young trees had come through that day. At his hotel that night, he slipped a new slide into his standard talk.


On the podium the next morning, he talked about the growing use of pesticides: “We’re using a lot of chemicals, pure and simple,” he said. “We’re using more than we’ve ever used before.”

 

[Big Don]

If you eat orange carrots, you are eating a GMO. It just wasn't modified with modern technology and techniques.

 

[arnisador]

People have no idea how much their food has been modified by what Darwin called artificial selection. Look up the original banana some time, folks! It's unrecognizable.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

People have no idea how much their food has been modified by what Darwin called artificial selection. Look up the original banana some time, folks! It's unrecognizable.

I can top you. Look up corn. I think someone said if we lost the current version it would take generations to recreate it...if they could.

 

[granfire]

If you eat orange carrots, you are eating a GMO. It just wasn't modified with modern technology and techniques.

or a purple one.

but the critical point is, by selection you don't just have the DNA of a jellyfish appear in a small tropical fish (Glofish)
or fish DNA jump into the flora.

Or have plants that require certain artificial chemicals to even be fertile! (But that's Monsanto tactics)

Things are going a bit swift and people do to change their genes as quickly - or animals. That could lead to problems down the road, because small things do matter in nature.

and yes, food as it originally grew would not look anywhere near like what we are used to: the original potato, with the original one set of chromosomes was/is no larger than a large pea. (the docu I saw that in, they were shooting the spuds with radiation to achieve a mutation...out of several dozen, only one cooperated)

 

[Bob Hubbard]

The squirrels did it.