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“The big-picture solution, the real
problem here, is not VAD,” she said.
“VAD is very serious, its implications are
very serious, but it is not an isolated issue.
It is a symptom of wider food insecurity
problems.”
These problems can be addressed in
the long-term by improving land access
and infrastructure support, Chopra said.
“Most of the time, in the communities
that are dealing with malnutrition issues,
it’s not the lack of food that’s the issue.
It’s an inability to access the already-
available food.”
CBAN also views Golden Rice as a
waste of money that could be better
spent on proven short-termmeasures to
counter VAD, such as supplementation
and food fortification.
“There are some very cost-effective,
efficient solutions that have been around
for awhile, which need more resources
for extension,” Chopra said. “We’re
spending hundreds and hundreds
of millions of dollars to produce a
technological response to a problem that
isn’t a technology problem.”
For Potrykus, criticism of Golden Rice’s
ability to address the underlying causes
of VAD is misguided because this was
never its goal in the first place.
“We have developed it to reduce VAD
and that’s what it can do very effectively,”
he said. “It is not a silver bullet. We
never claimed it’s a silver bullet to solve
all problems around micronutrient
deficiency. But it is an effective measure
to do what we have promised to do.”
Instead, Potrykus sees Golden Rice as
a complement to existing methods of
VAD reduction.
“Programs of food supplementation
or vitamin A capsules depend on
infrastructure and other resources and
funding,” Dubock said. “The reason
we still have so many people dying
and going blind as a result of VAD is
because those interventions don’t reach
everybody for different reasons.”
And those who want to see Golden
Rice being planted regularly still balk at
the anti-GMO contingent.
“It’s been demonstrated many, many
times that all this opposition is emotional,
ideological and has nothing to do with
science,” Potrykus said.
“What could be more natural, what
could be more organic, than the plants
making their own nutrition from their own
genomes?” Dubock asked, taking the
debate a step further.
Because of the opposition, and
the series of regulatory hurdles that
still need to be cleared, Golden Rice
has not been released. Field trials
are ongoing in locations throughout
Indonesia, Bangladesh and the
Philippines. However, due to some
setbacks—including the destruction
of a Philippine test plot in August
of 2013—the final variety is not yet
complete and agronomic data is still
being collected.
For Moore, it’s about looking ahead
to what might come next by stacking
different traits into the rice.
“You can basically turn a grain of rice
into a vitamin pill by using genetics, and
that is sustainable,” he said.
Clinical
Severe: subclinical
Moderate: subclinical
Mild: sporadic or
high risk
No data: problem likely
Public health importance of vitamin A de ciency, by country
Source: WHO
Golden Rice
, continued from page 17
Graphic by: Bart Ullstein @ Banson
The Food Issue
2014
Grains
West
44
Feature