The European Union (EU) established a de facto moratorium on GM crops in 1998, citing the precautionary principle and unspecified threats to human health and the environment. This caused many countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America to place bans on growing GM crops for fear their food exports to Europe would be embargoed. In 2005 the EU lifted the moratorium, but many restrictions remain in place and a number of EU countries are defying the decision. The fear of GM crops in Europe, where there is a surplus of food, has serious impacts on developing countries, where food shortages and nutritional deficiencies are common. This is where the campaign against genetic modification has done real harm. Whereas the big money crops have been able to power through the pressure groups and adopt many improved varieties, the traits that would improve nutrition for hundreds of millions of people in the developing countries do not have as much economic muscle behind them.[37]
The most serious nutritional problems in the world stem from micronutrient deficiencies. Most people, unless they live in a zone of conflict or disaster, get enough calories (energy) from carbohydrates in the form of sugar, starch, and oils. They are not “starving,” but rather they lack key minerals, vitamins, and amino acids. Among the main micronutrient deficiencies are iron (especially in women), vitamin A, vitamin E, and certain amino acids that make up proteins. Most of this deficiency occurs in the rice-eating cultures of Asia and Africa because rice has so few nutrients other than starch. The cultures that get their carbohydrates from wheat, potatoes, and corn rarely lack micronutrients because those crops are richer in vitamins and minerals.
The inhumanity of the anti-GM stance can be no better illustrated than with the example of Golden Rice. About two billion people eat rice as their primary supply of carbohydrates for energy. Most of these people are healthy because they can afford a variety of foods, including greens, fruits, and vegetables that provide them with the necessary vitamins, minerals, and protein. But the World Health Organization estimates that 124 million people suffer from a vitamin A deficiency and one to two million die each year from this deficiency. It is therefore almost as deadly as malaria. The deficiency results in 250,000 and 500,000 irreversible cases of blindness annually, mainly in children, half of whom die within a year of becoming blind.[38] Most of these people live in urban slums where poverty restricts their diet to a daily ration of rice.
In 1992, as molecular biologists were beginning to succeed with recombinant DNA technology, which would eventually become known as genetic engineering,[39] [40] two humanitarian scientists set to work in Switzerland. Dr. Ingo Potrykus[41] of the Institute of Plant Sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Dr. Peter Beyer[42] of the University of Freiburg were aware of the tragedy of vitamin A deficiency. For eight years they worked in their labs to engineer a rice plant that would solve this problem. In 2000 they published an article in the journal Science that indicated they had created a variety of rice containing beta-carotene, the precursor to vitamin A.[43] They did this by inserting a gene from corn into the rice’s DNA, the gene that gives the kernels their bright yellow color. The yellow color in daffodils, corn, and mangoes, and the orange color in carrots, yams, and pumpkins are caused by the presence of beta-carotene. The addition of beta-carotene to rice gives it a golden color and provides enough of the nutrient to prevent vitamin A deficiency and blindness.
Common white rice and Golden Rice
The invention of Golden Rice was hailed as a great breakthrough in the fight against malnutrition. Time magazine carried a cover photo of Dr. Potrykus posing beside Golden Rice plants with the headline, “This Rice Could Save a Million Kids a Year.” The subheading carried the ominous warning: “But protestors believe such genetically modified foods are bad for us and our planet.” Thus began the campaign, led by Greenpeace, to discredit both Golden Rice and its inventors. Greenpeace dubbed Golden Rice “fool’s gold” and claimed you would have to eat nine kilos of it to get enough Vitamin A to prevent blindness.[44] This was a lie, of course, but it was picked up by media around the world and a negative tone was soon established. Dr. Potrykus found himself having to defend his invention against these phony accusations. Greenpeace threatened to “rip the rice from the ground” if anyone dared plant it. They claimed that Golden Rice was merely a front for multinationals like Monsanto who were using it to gain acceptance of their evil plot to control the seed industry. [45]
I met Dr. Potrykus at a conference in Helsinki shortly after he became embroiled in controversy. He was clearly distressed by the vehemence and ignorance of the anti-GM movement. An otherwise mild-mannered, typically tweedy research scientist had been turned into a radical activist himself. Greenpeace now claimed that Golden Rice was a “technical failure” and that it would be much more effective if people with a vitamin A deficiency were to take vitamin pills and create home gardens, where they could grow leafy vegetables that are rich in beta-carotene. From their plush international headquarters on the canals of Amsterdam, the Greenpeace campaigners ignore the fact that the reason people suffer from the deficiency is because they are too poor to afford pills or garden space. And Greenpeace offers no aid to these people from its bulging bank accounts. Dr. Potrykus was moved to state “If you plan to destroy test fields to prevent responsible testing and development of Golden Rice for humanitarian purposes, you will be accused of contributing to a crime against humanity. Your actions will be carefully registered and you will, hopefully, have the opportunity to defend your illegal and immoral actions in front of an international court.”[46] I wholeheartedly agreed with him and seconded the motion.
Greenpeace has the nerve to resort to the “precautionary principle” to defend its zero-tolerance position on Golden Rice. Greenpeace says, “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.”[47] So Greenpeacers think that if a corn gene got into wild rice that would be worse than half a million blind children every year? What possible harm could rice plants cause with beta-carotene in them, a compound that occurs naturally in every green plant? All rice plants, including wild rice, contain beta-carotene, but it is in their leaves, where it provides no nutritional benefits . Carotenes are not only essential for eyesight in all animals, they are also one of the most important anti-oxidants in our diet. I challenge Greenpeace and the rest of the anti-GM movement to explain how beta-carotene or any other aspect of Golden Rice could have a negative impact on human health or the environment.
It is clear that Greenpeace’s opposition to Golden Rice is a desperate attempt to justify its zero-tolerance approach to genetic modification. Greenpeace knows that if there is one good GM variety, there will be others. Then my old organization would need to have a rational discussion about the merits of each variety, like the rest of us mere mortals. Instead, it prefers to stand on high in judgment, even though it condemns millions to needless suffering and death. For this reason, on this subject, I condemn its actions. In Dr. Potrykus’ own words:
Golden Rice fulfils all the wishes the GMO opposition had earlier expressed in their criticism of the use of the technology, and it thus nullifies all the arguments against genetic engineering with plants in this specific example.
• Golden Rice has not been developed by and for industry.
• It fulfils an urgent need by complementing traditional interventions.
• It presents a sustainable, cost-free solution, not requiring other resources.
• It avoids the unfortunate negative side effects of the Green Revolution.
• Industry does not benefit from it.
• Those who benefit are the poor and disadvantaged.
• It is given free of charge and restrictions to subsistence farmers.
• It does not create any new dependencies.
• It will be grown without any additional inputs.
• It does not create advantages to rich landowners.
• It can be re-sown every year fro
m the saved harvest.
• It does not reduce agricultural biodiversity.
• It does not affect natural biodiversity.
• There is, so far, no conceptual negative effect on the environment.
• There is, so far, no conceivable risk to consumer health.
• It was not possible to develop the trait using traditional methods.
Optimists might, therefore, have expected that the GMO opposition would welcome this case. As the contrary is the case, and the anti-GMO forces are doing everything to prevent Golden Rice reaching the subsistence farmer, we have learned that GMO opposition has a hidden, political agenda. It is not so much the concern about the environment, or the health of the consumer, or the help for the poor and disadvantaged. It is a radical fight against a technology merely for political success. This could be tolerated in rich countries where people lead a luxurious life, even without the technology. It cannot, however, be tolerated in poor countries, where the technology can make the difference between life and death, and health or severe illness. In fighting against Golden Rice reaching the poor in developing countries, GMO opposition has to be held responsible for the foreseeable unnecessary death and blindness of millions of poor every year.[48]
It soon became clear to Dr. Potrykus and his colleagues that it would not be easy to win approval for Golden Rice in the counties where vitamin A deficiency was most severe. The anti-GM movement had succeeded in erecting such a thicket of bureaucracy that it was impossible to gain approval even for field trials. They decided to form an organization, the Humanitarian Golden Rice Project, and to recruit support from key organizations. These include HarvestPlus (which in turn is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank), the Swiss Development and Collaboration Agency, USAID, and the Syngenta Foundation, together with local research institutes and several nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), including the Rockefeller Foundation and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).[49]
The Project set out to obtain rights to the numerous patents involved in creating Golden Rice. It was decided that when the rice became available it would be given free to farmers in developing countries who earned less than US$10,000 per year. Then began the arduous work of steering the rice through the regulatory process in key countries. It was not until 2004 that the first field trial was conducted in Louisiana, which proved Golden Rice produced sufficient beta-carotene under farm conditions. Then in 2005, with the help of the Syngenta Foundation, a new variety of Golden Rice was produced that contained 23 times as much beta-carotene as the original strain. This, along with studies on human uptake of beta-carotene from Golden Rice, now provides proof Golden Rice will be effective in preventing vitamin A deficiency with a cup of rice per day.[50] Yet progress has been intolerably slow.
Despite their efforts it was not until 2008 that they received permission for field trials in the Philippines and Bangladesh.[51] As of this writing there are still no farmers growing Golden Rice in any country. Millions of people continue to suffer from a vitamin A deficiency for no good reason, and many of them die young and blind. If the World Health Organization’s numbers are correct there have been two to four million cases of childhood blindness since Golden Rice was invented.[52] When I left Greenpeace it was partly because I realized its members didn’t really care about people. But I had no idea they could fall this low. I guess you can sink a rainbow.
But there is hope that by 2012 it will be possible to begin cultivating Golden Rice for public consumption. Surely it is inevitable that nutritional improvements such as this will eventually become accepted as conventional. Since Golden Rice was invented, scientists have developed many new varieties of GM crops with nutritional benefits : rice with a high iron content and enhanced vitamin E, tomatoes with increased anti-oxidants called anthocyanins, cassava with beta-carotene, carrots with twice the calcium. And there are many more to come. As Lawrence Kent, the senior program officer of agricultural development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation stated, “We’re hoping some initial successes are going to trigger additional interest, especially from national governments. If we can help get more nutrients into these staple foods, we really can help millions of people improve their lives.”[53]
One of the main reasons for optimism about the future of GM foods is that farmers are demanding access to the seeds so they can benefit from increased yields and superior products. Contrary to the activist fabrication that GM seeds are being pushed down farmers’ throats by greedy multinationals, it is the farmers themselves who are driving more and more countries to accept genetically modified crops. Typically, most politicians are afraid to buck the noisy, threatening rhetoric of the anti-GM crusaders. It has been left largely to the hard-working people of the land to fight for the right to plant genetically improved varieties.
The anti-GM campaigners shamelessly claim the farmers are on their side because they are victims, by virtue of their innocence and gullibility, of the multinational companies’ diabolical plot to enslave them with “toxic” seeds. I suppose they can always find a few dissident farmers to support their cause, but there is no question the overwhelming majority of mainstream farmers support GM technology and the benefits it brings to them and their customers. The anti-GM forces have purposefully adopted a parasitic relationship with the world farming community. They are using farmers to gain sympathy from a largely urban support base that does not understand genetics and does not know what is going on out in the country. Dr. Ingo Potrykus is correct; they should stand trial for crimes against humanity.
The first field trial of insect-resistant cotton (Bt cotton) was conducted in the United States in 1990. By 1995 there were one million hectares (2.5 million acres) of GM cotton growing in the U.S., and today there are about four million hectares (10 million acres), or about 90 percent of the cotton grown in the country. American farmers are obviously free to buy cottonseed from whomever they wish. They have chosen to pay considerably more for Bt cottonseed over conventional varieties because reduced need for pesticides and increased yield more than make up for the increase in seed cost. In 1996 Australia followed the U.S. and approved GM cotton for planting. It achieved similar positive results. This early success did not pass unnoticed in the other major cotton-growing countries, including China, India, and Brazil.
China, which produces nearly one-third of the world’s cotton, adopted GM cotton in 1997. Today 7.1 million Chinese farmers use genetically modified cottonseed as a result of which they get higher yields. This improves their standard of living. The Internet is loaded with misinformation about the failure of GM cotton in China. These stories are put out by Greenpeace and other anti-GM organizations that must rely on fabrications because there are no true examples of GM failure. China has become a leader in research and development of GM varieties In 2002 it became the first country to establish plantations of GM trees (poplar).[54] In the U.S., the Department of Agriculture recently gave ArborGen approval to plant up to 250,000 GM trees in the American south-east.[55]
Farmers in India, the second largest cotton producer, didn’t initially enjoy such a supportive government as their counterparts in China. GM crops were effectively banned in India due to anti-GM campaigns led by Vandana Shiva, a Western-educated feminist who claimed to be defending the “traditional agricultural practices” (read poverty and lack of education) of poor rural farmers. Then, in 2001, 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) of GM cotton were secretly planted in the western-most state of Gujarat. By mid-summer, nearby farmers noted the GM cotton plants were healthy and green while the surrounding conventional cotton was brown and damaged by the usual plague of cotton bollworms. The state government became aware of the situation and announced the “illegal” GM cotton would be burned. This annoyed the farmers who organized and figuratively “marched on city hall with their pitchforks” to protest the planned burning. This resulted in the government changing its policy and approving GM cotton. It was first planted in 2002. By 2009 GM cotton was grow
n on 7.6 million hectares (18.8 million acres), where five million farmers chose to buy GM seeds, mainly from varieties developed in India. This amounts to nearly 85 percent of the area of cotton under cultivation in India.[56] Clearly, the anti-GM movement’s interpretation of this as a failure of GM technology or a refusal on the part of farmers to adopt these new varieties lacks credibility. Yet it doggedly continues to oppose these crops despite their popularity among the very farmers it claims to support against the “multinational” seed companies.
A similar situation emerged in the Philippines, where the government was afraid to give farmers permission to plant insect-resistant GM corn even though they wanted to do so to rid their crops of the devastation caused by the corn borer. In 2002 Greenpeace warned that planting “toxic” GM corn “would result in millions of dead bodies, sick children, cancer clusters and deformities.”[57] They held a hunger strike for 29 days, finally calling it off on May 22, 2003, when it became clear that the government would allow farmers to plant GM corn because its top scientific advisors had recommended it do so. By 2009 400,000 hectares (one million acres) of land had been planted with GM corn.
In Brazil, Greenpeace succeeded in getting a judgment from a tribunal in 1999 to prevent the sale of GM soybeans. The government hesitated to step in, as it was typically sensitive to the high-profile attacks on GM foods. Meanwhile farmers in Argentina began to grow GM soybeans in 1996. By 1997 there were more than a million hectares (2.5 million acres) dedicated to producing these soybeans. As Brazil and Argentina share a common border it was not long before truckloads of GM soybean seeds were hauled from Argentina to Brazil, where farmers were eager to benefit from their higher yields. Thus began a long battle between farmers, Greenpeace and its allies, the courts and the government over the legality of GM crops.
Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist Page 40