{"id":77352,"date":"2016-08-08T12:00:33","date_gmt":"2016-08-08T11:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=77352"},"modified":"2016-08-07T18:46:51","modified_gmt":"2016-08-07T17:46:51","slug":"false-promises-and-failures-of-genetic-engineering-avoid-miracle-rice-and-just-eat-a-carrot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/08\/false-promises-and-failures-of-genetic-engineering-avoid-miracle-rice-and-just-eat-a-carrot\/","title":{"rendered":"False Promises and Failures of Genetic Engineering: Avoid \u2018Miracle\u2019 Rice and Just Eat a Carrot"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Vandana<\/a>

Vandana Shiva. (photo: The Seeds of Vandana Shiva film)<\/p><\/div>\n

Golden rice is a false miracle. It is a disease of nutritionally empty monocultures offered as a cure for nutritional deficiency. In fact, golden rice, if successful, will be 400% less efficient in providing Vitamin A\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

1 Jul 2016 – <\/em>Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution, died on September 9, 2009. Alfred G. Gilman died on December 23, 2015. Both were Nobel laureates and now both dead. Gilman was a signatory to a recent letter condemning Greenpeace and its opposition to genetic engineering.<\/p>\n

How many Nobel laureates does it take to write a letter? Easily ascertained \u2014 the dead Gilman and 106 others were enlisted in \u201csupporting GMOs and golden rice\u201d. Correct answer \u2014 107, dead or alive.<\/p>\n

The laureates were rounded up by Val Giddings (senior fellow, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation), Jon Entine (author of Abraham\u2019s Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People) and Jay Byrne (former head of corporate communications, Monsanto). Real people don\u2019t have the luxury of getting Nobel laureates to write 1\/107th of a letter, \u201cchosen\u201d folk do. Evidently.<\/p>\n

\"GoldenRice-280x140\"<\/a>Cornell University is a \u201cchosen\u201d institution \u2014 central to genetically modified public relations. The Cornell Alliance of Science is funded by Bill Gates, just like the failed golden rice experiment.<\/p>\n

The Nobel laureates accuse Greenpeace of killing millions by delaying ghost rice \u2014 something the biotech industry accuses me of doing, for the same reason. Unlike golden rice \u2014 whose failure to launch is the industry\u2019s own failure, the opposition to genetic engineering (and hence golden rice) is very real and successful. As Glenn Stone, a rice scientist at Washington University, states: \u201cThe simple fact is that after 24 years of research and breeding, golden rice is still years away from being ready for release.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is Borlaug\u2019s Green Revolution monocultures that contributed to malnutrition by destroying biodiversity, which destroys the diversity of nutrients we need to be healthy. As Navdanya research has shown, biodiversity produces more food and nutrition per acre. Borlaug\u2019s ghost is still shaping the industrial agriculture \u201cmiracles\u201d based on monocultures of the mind and spin in place of science.<\/p>\n

It is now more than 20 years since the \u201cmiracle\u201d golden rice began to be promoted as the excuse to allow patents on life. The last time golden rice was resurrected when Patrick Moore of Allow Golden Rice Now was sent to Asia to push the failed promise. Women of the world organised and responded to Moore \u2014 Diverse Women for Diversity issued a declaration on International Women\u2019s Day in 2015 titled Women and Biodiversity Feed the World, not Corporations and GMOs.<\/p>\n

Golden rice is genetically engineered rice with two genes from a daffodil and one gene from a bacterium. The resulting GMO rice is said to have a yellow colouring, which is supposed to increase beta-carotene \u2014 a precursor of Vitamin A. It has been offered as a potential miracle cure for Vitamin A deficiency for 20 years.<\/p>\n

But golden rice is a false miracle. It is a disease of nutritionally empty monocultures offered as a cure for nutritional deficiency. In fact, golden rice, if successful, will be 400 per cent less efficient in providing Vitamin A than the biodiversity alternatives that women have to offer. To get your daily requirement of Vitamin A, all you need to eat is one of the following:<\/p>\n

Two tablespoons of spinach or cholai (amaranth) leaves or radish leaves
\nFour tablespoons of mustard or bathua leaves
\nOne tablespoon of coriander chutney
\nOne-and-a-half tablespoon of mint chutney
\nOne carrot
\nOne mango<\/p>\n

So, if you want to be four times more efficient than 107 Nobel laureates, just eat a carrot!<\/p>\n

Not only do these indigenous alternatives based on women\u2019s knowledge provide more Vitamin A than golden rice ever will, and at a lower cost, but also provide multiple other nutrients. Our critique of golden rice is that even if it is developed, it will be inferior to the alternatives women have in their hands and minds. Women are being blocked from growing biodiversity and spreading their knowledge to address malnutrition, by rich and powerful men and their corporations who are blind to the richness of the earth and our cultures.<\/p>\n

Through their monoculture of the mind, they keep imposing monocultures of failed technologies, blocking the potential of abundance and nourishment. As I wrote in 2000, blindness to biodiversity and women\u2019s knowledge is a blind approach to blindness prevention.<\/p>\n

Grain.org concluded in Grains of delusion: Golden rice seen from the ground, way back in 2001: \u201cThe best chance of success in fighting Vitamin A deficiency and malnutrition is to better use the inexpensive and nutritious foods already available, and in diversifying food production systems in the fields and in the household. The euphoria created by the Green Revolution greatly stifled research to develop and promote these efforts, and the introduction of golden rice will further compromise them. Golden rice is merely a marketing event. But international and national research agendas will be taken by it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Giddings-Entine-Byrne Nobel PR stunt was timed to coincide with the US Senate vote on the Dark Act \u2014 the denial to Americans of the right to know what they eat. With two decades of the GMO experiment failing to control pests and weeds, creating super pests and super weeds instead, there is now an attempt to push through the \u201cnext generation\u201d of GMOs \u2014 such as \u201cgene drives\u201d for exterminating nutrient-rich species like the amaranth. Amaranth, a weed to the 107 Nobel laureates, is a richer source of Vitamin A than golden rice has promised it will be, when it grows up. The laureates would have us round up all the Vitamin A we already have in abundance, create deficiencies by exterminating it with RoundUp, and provide golden rice to alleviate the absence of Vitamin A.<\/p>\n

Mr Gates is also supporting this failed miracle, as well as the failed communication through the Cornell Alliance for Science. He also funds the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition and Harvest Plus, the corporate alliance for biofortification.<\/p>\n

The corporate-controlled World Food Prize for 2016 has been announced for \u201cBiofortification\u201d. Scientists funded by Mr Gates have been given the prize for inventing an orange sweet potato. But the Maori in New Zealand had developed kumara, orange (beauregard) sweet potato, centuries ago.<\/p>\n

Mr Gates is also funding the biopiracy research of James Dale of Queensland, who took the Vitamin A-rich indigenous bananas of Micronesia and declared them to be his invention.<\/p>\n

The biopiracy of people\u2019s biodiversity and indigenous knowledge is what Mr Gates is funding. The Gates fortification or Nobel fortification, will not nourish people. Fraud is not food.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________<\/p>\n

TRANSCEND Member<\/a> Prof. Vandana Shiva is a physicist, ecofeminist, philosopher, activist, and author of more than 20 books and 500 papers. She is the founder of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, and has campaigned for biodiversity, conservation and farmers\u2019 rights, winning the Right Livelihood Award [Alternative Nobel Prize] in 1993. She is executive director of the Navdanya Trust.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 vandanashiva.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Golden rice is a false miracle. It is a disease of nutritionally empty monocultures offered as a cure for nutritional deficiency. In fact, golden rice, if successful, will be 400% less efficient in providing Vitamin A\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77352\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}