1. Greenpeace protests marketing of GE rice
2. Greenpeace declares Golden Rice ceasefire
3. Greenpeace approves moral goals of GM rice
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1. Greenpeace protests marketing of GE rice
The Times Of India
10 Feb 2001
NEW DELHI: Environment NGO, Greenpeace, today raised serious objections against the proposed sale of genetically engineered "golden rice", saying it will not solve the malnutrition problem, as claimed by its developers.
"Contrary to the claims of the genetic engineering (GE) industry, that golden rice will cure millions from vitamin a deficiency (VAD) and related diseases, it will increase the intake 12 times and could also be a serious health hazard," Michelle Chawla, Greenpeace GE campaigner, told reporters here.
Free sale of the GE rice has been proposed in 2003 after the scientific trials are over. She said calculations show that an adult would have to eat at least 3.7 kg of dry weight rice to satisfy his daily intake of vitamin A from golden rice against a normal daily intake of 300 gm.
The beta-carotene compound present in any food product including golden rice has to be transformed into vitamin A by the body. The former's availibility and efficiency of its conversion is measured as bio-availibility, she added.
Chawla said there was no definite data yet on the bio- availibility of GE rice and its stability during storage. Hence, without pre-marketing trials there was the lurking fear of it being a health hazard.
She said there were better alternatives to combat vitamin A deficiency including red palm oil, ripe coloured fruits and cooked yellow tubers whose bio-availibility was much higher than GE rice.
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2. Greenpeace declares Golden Rice ceasefire
By David Firn in Lyons, France
Financial Times
February 9 2001
Greenpeace, the environmental campaign group, has promised not to disrupt trials of Golden Rice, a new variety genetically modified to contain vitamin A and patented by Swiss group Syngenta. The rice has been developed to prevent childhood blindness in the developing countries, where loss of sight due to vitamin A deficiency is widespread.
Benedikt Haerlin, head of Greenpeace's anti-GM campaign, said the organisation had made the U-turn because there was a clear difference in terms of possible benefit between Golden Rice and other genetically engineered crops that it opposes. So far, companies have concentrated on making crops that produce their own insecticides in their leaves, or are resistant to herbicides. Greenpeace has destroyed trials of such crops.
"This is a tough question for Greenpeace. There is clearly a different moral component to these [Golden Rice] trials," Mr Haerlin said.
The group is sceptical that the vitamin-enriched rice, being trialed in the Philippines, will have significant benefits. Describing it as "fool's gold", the campaigners said people would need to eat more than three kilos of the rice a day to get enough to prevent blindness. But sensitive to criticism from developing countries that it is blocking access to life-saving technology, Greenpeace agreed the trials were needed to clarify the risks and benefits.
It also accused industry of using Golden Rice to blackmail regulators into lowering the barriers to GM crops. Mr Haerlin said Syngenta, the Swiss group that owns the patents, had claimed 50,000 children would lose their sight every month that Golden Rice was delayed. "This is a moral set up," he said.
Greenpeace announced its policy change at bioVision, the life sciences forum held every two years in Lyons, France. Greenpeace's participation inside the forum, rather than outside, marks a change since bioVision was set up by the former French prime minister Raymond Barre two years ago. Then protesters hung their trademark banners from the conference centre. This year it was the turn of Greenpeace to have its press conference disrupted. People from Monsanto of the US, Syngenta and Schering of Germany had infiltrated the meeting. Some of them heckled the presenters while Ingo Potrykus, inventor of the rice, seized the microphone to refute the environmentalists' claims. However, one of the infiltrators, Giuseppe Vita, chairman of Schering, welcomed the environmentalists' presence. "Now they are on the inside, with us, the debate has become much more open and less demagogical," he said.
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3. Greenpeace approves moral goals of GM rice
The Times
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 10 2001
FROM MARK HENDERSON, SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT IN LYONS
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2-81557,00.html
GREENPEACE has promised for the first time that its activists will not attempt to destroy or disrupt field trials of a genetically modified crop.
Rice with extra vitamin A is being tested by the charitable Rockefeller Foundation to curb a deficiency which causes blindness in 500,000 malnourished children every year.
Environmental activists have wrecked GM tests in several countries, including Britain. Benedikt Haerlin of Greenpeace International, speaking at the Biovision world life sciences forum in Lyons, said that although the group remained opposed to all genetically modified crops, including the GM rice, it would not disrupt trials that were about to begin in the Philippines because it approved of the moral goals of the researchers who developed it. The crop, known as “golden rice” because of its colour, is designed to assist the fight against vitamin A deficiency by including the chemical precursors of the vitamin. Rice is the world’s most commonly eaten staple crop.
Herr Haerlin said he accepted that the rice stood in a “different moral context” to other GM crops. “I do not expect or intend to do direct action against field trials on golden rice. There is a different moral context for GMOs (genetically modified organisms) which have an insecticide or pesticide, and GMOs that serve a good purpose. Greenpeace has to take these moral stances.”
Ingo Potrykus, of the Institute of Plant Sciences in Switzerland, who is leading development of the rice, welcomed Greenpeace’s pledge, but questioned the rest of its stance on the issue. Herr Haerlin had said that golden rice contained too little vitamin A to be of practical use in fighting malnutrition. Dr Potrykus said that the Greenpeace figures referred only to the first prototype, and that more developed versions would be able to provide up to 40 per cent of the recommended daily amount of vitamin A.