THE GOLDEN RICE ENIGMA!-WHAT IS THE TRUTH?

Can GM foods solve world hunger? This is a question posed by many people concerned with the possibility of mass starvation in a few years to come because of inadequate food production to feed the ever growing population all over the world. No doubt GM foods have some advantages when it comes to preventing food losses through better strains of plants with built-in pest resistance but whether saving of food through such intervention is adequate to augment the food supply is questionable. In one of the well publicized achievement by the private GM food developers while creating the so called Golden Rice, it is claimed ( or bragged) that mass cultivation of this version of rice would prevent vision loss in poor countries due to inadequate intake of vitamin A in daily diets. Can any one take this claim seriously if the following commentary truly reflects the ground reality vis-a-vis cultivation of Golden Rice?

"For one thing, we've learned that golden rice will not grow in the kinds of soil that it must to be of value to the world's hungry. To grow properly, it requires heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides -- expensive inputs unaffordable to the very people that the variety is supposed to help. And we've also learned that golden rice requires large amounts of water -- water that might not be available in precisely those areas where Vitamin A deficiency is a problem, and where farmers cannot afford costly irrigation projects. And one more thing -- it turns out that golden rice doesn't work, even in theory. Malnourished people are not able to absorb Vitamin A in this form. And even if they could, they'd have to eat an awful lot of the stuff. An 11-year-old boy would have to eat 27 bowls of golden rice a day in order to satisfy his minimum requirement for the vitamin".

Is it not criminal to claim that Golden Rice would solve the wide scale prevalence of blindness due to vitamin deficiency in many developing countries while such assertions fly in the face of truth? The multi billion dollar GM food industry is built on a science that is not sound enough but it has been able to brow beat one country in this Universe, viz the US to permit GM versions of crops and ingredients in processed foods with no mandatory "front of the pack"labeling requirement. In contrast most countries raise very inconvenient questions regarding long term safety of such foods and the environmental impact posed by large scale cultivation of GM crops. World must unite to fight this aggressive trait on the part of "profit at any cost" GM lobby to prevent a catastrophe of Himalayan proportion waiting to happen!

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

GOLDEN "RICE"-A NUTRITIONAL BOGEY?

Every scientific endeavor is subjected to stringent scrutiny regarding its relevance and safety to the people it is supposed to serve and therefore the controversy surrounding the vitamin enrichment of rice through genetic technology under the project "Golden Rice" is also to be expected. There are two aspects on which one needs to be critical. First whether the new technology is really going to solve the problem of vitamin A deficiency. Then comes the question of safety of the new version of the product. Unless industry is able to satisfy the critics on the above issues, it is unlikely that such new technologies become universally acceptable.

"The problem is that vitamin A rice will not remove vitamin A deficiency (VAD). It will seriously aggravate it. It is a technology that fails in its promise. Since the daily average requirement of vitamin A is 750 micrograms of vitamin A and 1 serving contains 30g of rice according to dry weight basis, vitamin A rice would only provide 9.9 micrograms which is 1.32% of the required allowance. Even taking the 100g figure of daily consumption of rice used in the technology transfer paper would only provide 4.4% of the RDA."

It is debatable whether rice is really a worthy candidate for vitamin enrichment and the fact that huge quantities are needed even to meet even 10% of RDA needs to be kept in mind. Vitamin A is stored in the body for a long time and once a year Vitamin A shots are being administered in many countries to combat its deficiency. Past experience has shown that there are much better delivery media for carrying Vitamin A such as milk, cooking fats, etc and efficient fortification technologies are available to day to ensure uniform dispersion of the nutrient in the carrier. The allegation that golden rice causes some side effects needs to be fully investigated before attempting at commercialization by the industry.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com