Scientists have warned that a court decision to block the growing of the genetically modified (GM) crop Golden Rice in the Philippines could have catastrophic consequences. Tens of thousands of children could die in the wake of the ruling, they argue.
The Philippines had become the first country – in 2021 – to approve the commercial cultivation of Golden Rice, which was developed to combat vitamin A deficiency, a major cause of disability and death among children in many parts of the world.
But campaigns by Greenpeace and local farmers last month persuaded the country’s court of appeal to overturn that approval and to revoke this. The groups had argued that Golden Rice had not been shown to be safe and the claim was backed by the court, a decision that was hailed as “a monumental win” by Greenpeace.
Many scientists, however, say there is no evidence that Golden Rice is in any way dangerous. More to the point, they argue that it is a lifesaver.
full take: this is a complex topic involving sociology, agricultural science, economics, culture, ethics, and more and deserves serious discourse
meme take: THAT RICE IS PRETTY I WANT IT
It has had serious discourse and research for 24 years. Greenpeace is just an anti-science hack group.
Basically, the issue is that this Golden Rice is a foreign species in Philippines. That comes with a lot of complications.
Most importantly, local farmers don’t have the knowledge how to deal with this new type of rice. They are worried that their native species are being replaced and could go extinct, which would be difficult to revert. It would lead to yet another platform lock-in.
It’s important to save and continue to grow heirloom species, sure. But almost no cultivated species are native to where they’re grown.
Patent bullshit aside.
It’s interesting about native species. Think about apple trees in the UK. They grow very well here, the climate is suited perfectly, they don’t seem to be invasive (talking as a layperson here). Yet they were introduced about 2000 years ago by the Romans. Does that mean they’re old enough to now count as native? I mean, if you go back far enough, everything came from somewhere else. Unless you’re looking at a deep-sea vent where life very first evolved, then it has spread from somewhere else.
Maybe if I was a botanist or ecologist, I would know the actual answer. But I’m just a person who loves thinking about things in a philosophical way, without necessarily wanting to research in-depth answers for every little puzzle
I mean, if you go back far enough, everything came from somewhere else.
The Wikipedia article on Native Species is a good start. It’s a bit blurrier than I thought but I think the important part is that it’s evolved along with the local ecosystem.
Rice is a well-understood plant with well-understood properties. One of these properties is that it just doesn’t have many vitamins. If you want vitamins, you have to get another plant as a side-dish.
What these mad scientists propose is to change the very nature of rice to make it something that it is not, to solve a problem (Vitamin A deficiency) that could be approached with much less severe measures (like, growing carrots as a side-dish).
Agriculture is like medicine: You should always attempt to use the approach that is least invasive and has the smallest possible impact, while still solving the problem. This way, you minimize complications and reduce risks.
Rice already has the beta-carotene genetic pathway. It’s just missing the final enzyme gene to cause production of the precursor product.
Furthermore, people have already tried to introduce alternative crops. But people who live there aren’t interested. If a crop like carrots isn’t a part of their cuisine, they have little to no interest in altering the foods they eat. Especially if they’re already subsistence farmers with limited crop growing areas.
Indeed, “eating more food” is generally agreed to be the best way to remedy childhood malnutrition and food insufficiency. It’s hands down agreed upon to be the best possible approach.
Unfortunately, children who suffer from these maladies often lack additional food to eat, which is why there are several lines of inquiry for solving this problem:
- can we make it so more food?
- can we make the food better?
- can we make the food faster?
Inevitably, that means things like “vegetables that tolerate bad soil”, “vitamin fortified rice”, or “fast growing wheat”, or “crazy fertilizer strategies”.
It’s a sad reality that most places that can’t grow enough food to properly feed children typically lack the ability to just grow more, to say nothing of diversifying into more resource intensive crops. otherwise they would probably do that.
that sounds like it would require paying people enough to afford more than just rice and we can’t be having that now can we
If just grow carrots lol was adequate, tell me again why people are deficient in the nutrients golden rice has over baseline rice, please.
Like bill nye said, gmo’s are just a tool in your tool box to solve the answer and they are a really useful tool for the future as things get harder for us
I think you may need to consider the cost and shelf life difference here. Suggesting “what if they just ate a more expensive vegetable more” seems like a pretty callous take.
I know they grow carrots in the phillipines but they definitely aren’t native to there either.
Why can’t they just fortify their caviar with vitamin a?
Rice, no matter the type isn’t a native species to the Philippines, what the fuck are you talking about?
Depends on what you consider a “native species”. Are apples a native species in germany?
If not, then why do we still mourn the loss of “old”, “traditional” varieties?
Right, right… and why does Indonesia need capitalist-parasite-friendly monocropping all of a sudden to properly feed it’s people again?
The idea that more capitalist exploitation will (somehow) fix the problems caused by capitalist exploitation is something the liberal hive-mind here on lemmy seems rather eager to get behind.
Good on those local farmers.
Fuck the gmo-peddlers, fuck (so-called) “Golden Rice,” and fuck liberals who turn pro-colonialist at the drop of a hat.
Golden rice was developed as part of a non profit grant. Seed is distributed free of charge to farmers with an annual profit of $10k or less, and they are permitted to keep and replant seed as much as they want. Nutritionally it is identical to normal rice except it contains high levels of vitamin A for which large portions of the population in the Philippines (and many other countries) have a critical deficiency. Vitamin A deficiency has a major impact on childhood mortality rates.
The only criticism they have is that it’s a gmo crop and they don’t trust its safety, which is really just a PR issue because it has been thoroughly tested for human consumption. Your response is a perfect example of making the problem worse through your ignorance.
Golden rice was developed as part of a non profit grant.
Right, right… oil tycoon money, wasn’t it?
Seed is distributed free of charge to farmers
Who owns the patent to this garbage, eh? And what happens when they decide to… you know - go mask off capitalist after the monocropping have enriched their subservient crony elites in Indonesia while impoverishing the farming folk?
it contains high levels of vitamin A for which large portions of the population in the Philippines
Why are these countries so impoverished that they can’t supply their own people with proper nutrition? Perhaps it has something to do with the colonialist pillaging perpetrated by the likes of those oil tycoons and their ilk?
Your response is a perfect example of making the problem worse through your ignorance.
Your response is a perfect example of why liberalism (and your attending bootlicking for colonialism) needs to be crushed into powder and then napalmed out of existence.
“others may die for my ideals, but that’s a price I’m willing to pay”
Grow up.
They’re already suffering for your consumerist dystopia, liberal - getting angry because your rich colonizers don’t get to exploit them even further won’t change that.
Your thought process is truly dizzying. A non-profit, distributing a seed to save lives; one that does actually go to seed (meaning the farmers WILL BUY LESS AND LESS SEED OVER TIME) is colonizers exploiting them. Willful ignorance, arguing because you get off on it, or do you actually believe the bullshit you spew?
Whatever, get wrecked.
Edit to add: imagine - calling me a liberal thinking it’s an insult.
calling me a liberal thinking it’s an insult.
That’s because it is an insult, liberal - it’s only liberals that don’t get that.
A non-profit,
Since when is Syngenta a “non-profit?”
distributing a seed to save lives;
Since when does capitalist megacorps care about “saving lives,” liberal? Do you need your own rancid ideology explained to you?
Whatever, get wrecked.
Take your colonialism apologetics and shove it where the sun don’t shine, bootlicker.
This article is pretty close to pure clip bait and possible just media spin from Greenpeace, other more reputable articles don’t even mention Greenpeace and highlight a lot of local support against the rice. https://www.isaaa.org/blog/entry/default.asp?BlogDate=5/8/2024
Way to go greenpiss. Anti-scietific fear mongering that will only hurt.
That tracks for Greenpeace. They’ve been fighting nuclear power since their inception.
I mean with nuclear power there are atleast some things objectively problematic like the high costs of the energy produced and the garbage that is left off. I would not have a beef with thrm protesting GMO’s either, where they are used to essentially make the farmers dependent on the seller of the crops. It is this black and white aproach thats really got me grinding my gears because at this point its more of a well known cult than a group for the environment.
If we had gone nuclear 60 years ago climate change would be nothing more than an interesting theory. Greenpeace has as much share of the blame for the current state of the world as Exxon mobil does.
This is just obviously untrue. Not least because we did build lots of nuclear power plants. One significant reason why we didn’t build more was their high price compared to … coal and gas plants. But sure, it’s Greenpeace’s fault and not Exxon Mobil.
To add to this: The great majority of nuclear plant operators are companies with a majority stake in fossil fuels. Apparently fossil fuel is more profitable for them than nuclear. Additionally, it is much, much more cheaper (like a 1:3 cost ratio) to produce renewable energy via solar and wind than to do it via nuclear energy. Also, fissile material is non-renewable and mining sites are mostly situated in non-western regions, making us yet again dependent on energy imports. Further, nuclear energy is just not as quickly scalable as renewables, as the construction of nuclear plants usually takes around 10 years, at minimum, whilst wind and solar parks with the same output as nuclear reactors only require a couple if years. Every pro-nuclear advocate therefore effectively supports the centralized fossil fuel industry (as opposed to decentralized energy production of renewables) and fosters dependence on increasingly expensive fissle fuel imports. The cognitive dissonance by proponents towards nuclear energy simply is as deep as the money pockets of our fossil fuel overlords who are desperate to keep control of the narrative and ownership of the energy production.
Another significant reason we didn’t invest more in nuclear was hysteria spread by fear mongering groups like Greenpeace.
But sure, it’s Greenpeace’s fault and not Exxon Mobil.
They’re both to blame. They both put significant money and effort into keeping us on petroleum long after a viable alternative was available.
Classic brainwashed nuclear take presenting it as black & white like if all energy used in the world was from nuclear there would have been no issue on uranium ressource.
Well, let’s see. We have a century’s worth of uranium left, and only 50 years of petroleum. Also, resource scarcity isn’t really the problem with petrochemicals. It’s the environmental impact. Nuclear doesn’t have that problem. Classic brainwashed tree hugger poser rambling on incoherently while ignoring any and all inconvenient facts. You should join Greenpeace.
If you had 2 braincell working maybe you’d see fuel consumption is related to production so we wouldn’t have 100 year left if all energy was nuclear as it isn’t even 10% of today’s mix. This is basic energy knowledge if you don’t lnow that don’t even try to understand energy policy of countries dumbass.
I’m highly skeptical of anti-GMO claims. Usually they come from the same family of pseudoscience as anti-nuclear and anti-vaccine
There are very valid arguments against GMOs even if they’re safe from a strictly scientific point of view. Those mainly pertain to control over seeds by corporations that will allow them to exploit poor farmers. This is happening to a huge extent in India where many farmers have committed suicide because of these practices.
Your ‘argument against GMOs’ is an argument against seed patents, not GMOs. That’s the same as saying there’s an ‘argument against insulin’ because big companies own the patents and charge lots of money. The product is absolutely irrelevant to the conversation.
There are very valid arguments against GMOs
All “valid arguments against GMOs” are ultimately arguments against capitalistic profit-at-all-costs practises.
When you take the profit margin out of the process, there end up being no valid arguments against GMOs, as all such profit-free GMOs that end up moving to production are there purely to benefit humanity as a whole, and not to restrict said benefit to a rarefied group of obscenely wealthy people. It’s the GMOs with capitalistic roots which are problematic for capitalistic, Parasite-Class-greed related reasons.
Yeah, that’s basically what I said.
Yep, exactly. I’m against Monsanto suing farmers for cross-pollination when the wind blows.
Seed patents are dumb. Once something has been planted it belongs to the ground now, if it spreads that’s too bad for giant corpo.
You’re link isn’t even about the “cross pollination” situation (which was also done intentionally by the farmer) but about someone buying the seeds from a third party and then claiming that they are allowed to replant the seeds because they aren’t bound by the licensing agreement.
We can argue whether or not this farmer should be allowed to replant the seeds in this case, but trying to paint it as if the seeds flew into his property and then he was sued for it is a disgusting misrepresentation of what actually. It was done very intentionally by the farmer. They aren’t some innocent victim, but one who thought he could get the ip without paying for it. We’re talking about capitalists fighting each other.
Thank you! Sorry I had gone done a rabbit hole and copied the wrong link. There’s a lot of Monsanto lawsuits it turns out.
This was the one I was thinking of, but its not as readable. Also, it’s not 100% whether it was solely because of the wind, although that’s the claim. https://www.ielrc.org/content/n0407.htm
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeiser
If you don’t want to read the link, it wasn’t accidental. Some glyphosate resistant crop flew into his property. The farmer killed off all of the other crops with glyphosate and then harvested the seeds from the surviving plants, knowing they were Monsantos ip, and replanted them.
The farmer did not argue in court that it was accidental, but that because it was his private property and he had no agreement with Monsanto that he had the right to do this.
Again we can argue whether or not he had the right to do this. But this whole “poor farmer did nothing and got sued!” Is just straight up blatantly misleading anti GMO propaganda. I don’t believe you are intentionally spreading it, but you are none-the-less.
That’s not an argument against GMOs, just a specific kind of GMOs.
It’s an argument against commercial use of GMOs in agriculture by monopolistic megacorporations.
It’s an argument against seed patents and capitalism.
Farmers by and large don’t reuse seeds now, patenting seeds so they can’t be reused is not limited to GMO, farmers are free to reuse seeds that are no longer patented, and farmers committing suicide in India has nothing to do with GMO specifically, but issue with farming in general.
These are all just made up anti GMO talking points only loosely related to GMO, if even at all.
GMOs aren’t inherently bad but many crops are genetically modified to be resistant to glyphosate and other herbicides so they can douse the fields with the stuff.
Even in that case it’s not the modified plant itself that’s harmful but the remains of roundup left in it after being sprayed.
Right. The genetic modification protects the crops from glyphosate, not you.
deleted by creator
Imagine? We’d be able to write our name in the grass like we can in the snow.
Microplastics in fetuses, glyphosphate in our piss, and cancer rising in young people. The future is truly amazing.
left in it? I wish. More like left everywhere
My friend got her doctorate engineering rice to grow in high salinity areas. The goal was to aid farmers near brackish water and without access to good farmland. Greenpeace would definitely not like that.
What a terrible article. A polarized solution: either the dangerous rice or nothing… As if no other possible food sources could exist or could ever have been considered. And nobody saw this coming, and nobody had any backup plans.
The backup plan was to blame Greenpeace and throw their hands in the air, magically absolved of any responsibility. Jesus.
What evidence do you have that it’s dangerous? We’ve got decades of testing that shows it’s safe and effective, and the experts all agree that there is no evidence that it’s dangerous.
I feel like I’m debating against the anti-vaxxers of the COVID pandemic all over again: ignorant fear over the opinion of experts.
it seems to be the nature of the political situation. If you check the news section of the greenpeace/phillipines website this story is in line with their own stated position. relevant link
The author didn’t address it in the least, which is troubling, but how exactly did they prove to the court that the rice hadn’t been shown to be safe? They seem to have made a convincing argument and I’d rather like to know what it was. Seems like an important part of the story to me.
I completely agree.
This is especially rational to question when looking at the GMO’s previous healthclaims like the safety of Roundup - Monsanto has had no qualms about lying to the public in the past.
Monsanto has nothing to do with this topic. You’re just fearmongering.
My trust has been eroded by this industry as a whole - I’m not saying their shit is dangerous but I won’t accept their claims on blind faith.
It’s perfectly reasonable to demand a study in the name of public health.
They have been working on and testing this golden rice since 2000, with tons of studies done on its biochemistry, including from people eating it. In fact, several countries have already been using the rice for years What else are the scientists supposed to do to appear Greenpeace’s purposefully vague demands?
cross-pollination experiments with other rice varieties.
Exactly. And those who suffer in the end is always the people, never the big corps. Never trust big corps to do the right thing in agriculture. They’ll fuck you over and leave the environment destroyed. Build local species.
“Big corps” aren’t involved here. It’s a philanthropy project, and from what I can find it’s not legally encumbered in any way like Monsanto stuff is. This is entirely Greenpeace doing something that gets headlines, instead of something actually good. Don’t forget that that organization, too, has motives, first among which is going to be survival and advancement of the organization.
Big corps aren’t involved?
Heard of Syngenta?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngenta
As for their involvement in golden rice see: http://www.goldenrice.org/Content2-How/how9_IP.php
These companies provided access to the required technologies free of charge, for humanitarian purposes.
They don’t own it, they don’t get paid for it.
But Roundup doesn’t have anything to do with GMOs? They made genes that let some plants tolerate a pesticide. The effects of that pesticide have nothing to do with the gene.
According to the Greenpeace website:
But behind the hype, GE ‘Golden’ rice is environmentally irresponsible, poses risks to human health and could compromise food, nutrition and financial security.
My take from this: It may be that they targeted more than the safety, but also the possibility of gene flow (to other rice crops including wild rice), possible effects on biodiversity, and the ever-present patent issues that come up with GMO’s.
Scanning down the page though, they don’t specifically say why it poses risks to human health other than some hand-wavey stuff about how it would make people rely on rice instead of providing other sources of vitamin A in their diets.
They also brought up that at least one experiment with the rice on children in China wasn’t done ethically, and also that this could be imposed against people’s religious beliefs.
It mentions the cross-contamination gene flow stuff, but I thought because rice was self pollinating that that wasnt as big an issue with GM rice. (I’m not an expert by any means.)
Their general argument seems to be “new way bad, old way good” without any scientic evidence. They didn’t have to convince scientists though.
I’d like to point out that Greenpeace or the local population doesn’t have to prove that GM rice is bad. It’s the other way around:
Big corps have to prove that GM rice is good and has no adversarial long-term effects, which is impossible to prove.
Honestly, that’s where my comment started… But everything I found showed that studies had proven that it was safe. So I changed tack and started focusing on the Greenpeace side.
Which big corps would that be exactly?
It’s perfectly possible to show that it’s safe to any reasonable standard: https://www.irri.org/golden-rice-faqs
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jafc.9b01524
The only biologically meaningful difference between GR2E and control rice was in levels of β-carotene and other provitamin A carotenoids in the grain. Except for β-carotene and related carotenoids, the compositional parameters of GR2E rice were within the range of natural variability of those components in conventional rice varieties with a history of safe consumption.
How exactly do you propose that the genetic makeup of the rice is going to impact the person eating it, if chemical analysis shows it’s not meaningfully different from any other rice?
You can’t demand that people prove something beyond unreasonable doubt. At some point you have to be able to articulate a concern to justify further scrutiny.
That would be Syngenta, the big agricultural corp involved in the project.
- Syngenta retains commercial rights, although it has no plans to commercialize Golden Rice.
- “Humanitarian Use” means (and includes research leading to):
- Use in developing countries (low-income, food-deficit countries as defined by FAO)
- Resource-poor farmer use (earning less than US$10,000 per year from farming)
The key part to me is the under $10,000 USD per year from farming requirement. What happens when a larger farm gets accidental cross pollination?
What happens to farms with organic certification if their neighbours start growing golden rice and it cross pollinates?
There is a history of Western nations using “humanitarian” outreach to sabotage developing nations.
Assuming that Syngenta are entirely altruistic is a huge risk for developing nations.
This is a good point, we shouldnt use this well tested and seemingly safe life saving scientific advance to save the lives and health of children because someone might have ulterior motives. Outright ban instead of a legal framework to protect against the abuse.
What big corps? Golden rice is developed by scientists working for universities and distributing it via NGOs for free.
And they’ve produced dozens of studies over the past 24 years showcasing its effectiveness and safety.
If gene flow from golden rice managed to successfully hybridize the four gene complex providing the iron, zinc, and beta-carotene nutrients into other rice crops, that would be incredible. It’s so unlikely to happen and the scientists involved have to work so incredibly hard to get it to happen, because it would be a tremendous good for the world if it did.
We could only hope that such gene flow would occur naturally from the golden rice.
Furthermore, you stole my argument.
What if it changes the flavor of all the world’s rice so sushi, risotto and every other rice-based dishes are different?
Assuming it’s still safely edible, people would find a way to make it taste good enough. There’s a million condiments in the world, something will work.
Unlikely. Each strain of culinary rice, particularly in Japan is incredibly specific. Sushi rice is often packaged with single strains and new cross bred strains are tracked and only a handful are legitimized for more widespread commercial cultivation. Crops are managed by experts who know exactly what to look for. Deviations in the crop selection for next crop’s seed is carefully scrutinized for potential hybridization.
I find it easier to think in terms of apples. Like you know how you go to the supermarket and there are 8 types of apple? There’s like hundreds of distinct cultivars of apple some that are hold overs from middle ages. Humans are very good at keeping their fav flavours from getting fucked up. Shout out to the Cox’s Orange Pippin or really any Victorian era dessert apple. If you haven’t tried one figure out how to get your hands on one. It’s worth it
It’s so unlikely to happen and the scientists involved have to work so incredibly hard to get it to happen, because it would be a tremendous good for the world if it did.
We could only hope that such gene flow would occur naturally from the golden rice.
This is what I was replying to.
And I am saying that in our current cultivation structure gene flow is something we are already used to accounting for. They are talking about the actual bio engineering process that makes that unlikely. I am talking about normal everyday gene flow.
The process of farming has accounted for regular gene flow for a very long time. What you choose to reseed is a pretty easy variable to control. Cross pollenated strains might occur in new fruit or seed but what in totality you harvest and what you choose to replant is fundamentally different. Unlike your average amateur cottage gardener farming done by experts is often incredibly specific as to what gets kept. An expert can tell a lot of things based on the shape of the entire plant not just it’s fruiting body before even relying on gene testing. If it’s something you work with everyday minute differences become very noticeable.
Also, there may be other people reading this that are actually worried about losing a strain of rice something they value. A lot of alarm happens because people simply don’t understand what systems already exist and their concern is essentially already a non-issue for other reasons.
Ah, I thought you were just jumping into a conversation that you didn’t understand.
I’m not generally a fan of GMO, mostly because we’re just not very good at it. Food with pesticide throughout when natural variants would just have it in the skin? Maybe not. That said, this looks like the perfect candidate for GMO. I dont mind having beta carotene being throughout the whole food, and i dont care if it gets expressed in the rest of the plant (not that i know if it does). If I could buy this in the store, I would. Sometimes I don’t feel like carrots. Also, saying they could get their Vitamin A elsewhere while completely ignoring widespread deficiencies in various regions is the stupidest argument I’ve heard in a while.
That’s an argument to regulate GMO crops, not to stop doing it.
Theres another possibility. That gene flow leads to making all other rice varieties inedible similar to what happens to “self-harvested/cross-pollinated” pumpkin/cucumber/zucchini seeds. Genes dont 100% copy over due to the process of recombination, which can cause quite unexpected outcomes. The GMO scientists never tested these quasi-infinite possibilities yet.
Furthermore, cross-contamination of traits like RoundUp resistance could spread under selection pressure. What’s the selective pressure for beta-carotene production in wild rice?
What does that furthermore have to do with anything? The selective pressure of a trait that uses up more plant energy to focus on its nutrient production and that is only beneficial to humanity and not wild species?
I believe that’s what they’re saying, yes. Concern of the trait spreading to other strains of rice are exaggerated because there’s nothing that would make this trait an advantage outside of the domestic food context, whereas Roundup resistance provides value to plants that want to grow near Roundup.
It’s actually interesting looking at what traits seem scary, but are actually massively negative in the wild. Like, there were a bunch of people freaking out about that modified salmon that grows three times faster (and requires 3 times the amount of food to compensate).
If that ever escaped into the wild, it would die. Period. The only way it stays alive is by being fed directly and by not having to use its energy to swim a lot. There is no advantage in the wild for growing 3 times faster. Heck, because of that, it likely wouldn’t even match up with the spawning season properly.
