Greenpeace still fights golden rice

See Greenpeace’s Vile War on the Poor and Vulnerable by Henry I. Miller, MS, MD and Rob Wager. Henry I. Miller, MS, MD, is the Glenn Swogger Distinguished Fellow at the American Council on Science and Health. Dr. Miller served for fifteen years at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Rob Wager is retired from the Department of Biology at Vancouver Island University. Excerpts: 

"For years, Greenpeace’s prodigious PR machine has been spearheading an effort to deny millions of children in the poorest nations an essential nutrient they need to stave off blindness and death. A precursor of that nutrient, vitamin A, has been introduced ingeniously into genetically engineered rice (“Golden Rice”). (It is readily converted into vitamin A in the body.) However, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Farmers and consumers in less-developed countries will benefit most from the myriad improvements of genetically engineered (GE) plants. Many varieties of GE plants improve food security, which is most critical in less-developed countries, where the success of a crop can literally spell the difference between starvation and survival. In their 1999 Canadian federal tax filings, Greenpeace admitted that they seek not the prudent, safe use of GE foods or even their labeling; instead, they demand nothing less than these products’ “complete elimination [from] the food supply and the environment.”

When asked if future scientific research could change their position, Lord Melchett, the head of Greenpeace, said: “I am happy to answer for Greenpeace…It is permanent and definite and complete opposition…” As Patrick Moore said, science was no longer important to Greenpeace.

A prominent target of Greenpeace has long been new GE plant varieties collectively called “Golden Rice.” Rice is a food staple and a primary source of calories for hundreds of millions, especially in Asia. Although it is an excellent source of calories, it lacks certain micronutrients necessary for a complete diet. In the 1980s and ’90s, German scientists Ingo Potrykus and Peter Beyer developed the “Golden Rice” varieties that are biofortified, or enriched, by genes that produce beta-carotene, the precursor of vitamin A.

The World Health Organization estimates that 250 million people suffer from Vitamin A Deficiency (VAD), including 40 percent of children under five in the developing world. VAD is epidemic among poor people whose diet is mainly composed of rice, which contains no beta-carotene or vitamin A. In developing countries, 200 to 300 million children of preschool age are at risk of vitamin A deficiency, which increases their susceptibility to illnesses, including measles and diarrheal diseases. Every year, about half a million children become blind as a result of vitamin A deficiency, and 70% of those die within a year.

Greenpeace’s campaign against Golden Rice has had devastating consequences in the developing world. Completely divorced from science  and reason, they continue to lobby against the regulatory approval and distribution of GE crops in developing countries. Golden Rice is still banned in India. An analysis  by academics Justus Wesseler and David Zilberman almost a decade ago found that  1.4 million child years had been lost due to the delays in the release of Golden Rice in India alone. 

Golden Rice could thus make contributions to human health comparable to Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine. Instead, anti-technology groups such as Greenpeace have given already risk-averse regulators the political cover to delay approvals."

"Greenpeace and others who are more interested in slogans than evidence and positive outcomes have not been swayed by the scientific consensus about the safety of GE crops — a consensus that is the result not only of innumerable reports by scholarly groups but also of thousands of risk-assessment experiments and vast real-world experience. In the United States alone, more than 90% of all cultivated corn, cotton, canola, soy, and sugar beets have been modified with molecular genetic engineering techniques (with similar numbers in Canada), and in several decades of consumption around the world, not a single health or environmental problem has been documented."

"Greenpeace has variously alleged that the levels of beta-carotene, the precursor of vitamin A, in Golden Rice are too low to be effective or so high that they would be toxic. However, feeding trials have shown the rice to be highly effective in preventing vitamin A deficiency, and toxicity is virtually impossible."

"In 2016, 160 Nobel laureates penned a letter  imploring Greenpeace to stop its baseless, cynical, and harmful activism:

We urge Greenpeace and its supporters to re-examine the experience of farmers and consumers worldwide with crops and foods improved through biotechnology, recognize the findings of authoritative scientific bodies and regulatory agencies, and abandon their campaign against “GMOs” in general and Golden Rice in particular.

Greenpeace ignored the plea, of course, and continued their campaign against Golden Rice."