licensed it back to the inventors for
“humanitarian” use, under specific
terms, in developing countries.
Syngenta
retains
full
commercial rights over Golden
Rice, including over improvements
of the technology. They also directly
own the patent on GR2, a revised
Golden Rice made with a maize
gene. But the company has declared
that it no longer has interest in
marketing the rice itself in
developed countries.
The Chinese state-owned
corporation ChemChina bought the
vast majority of shares of Syngenta
in June 2017 for US$43 billion.
ChemChina bought the remaining
shares shortly after and Syngenta
was de-listed. Syngenta is now a
private company owned by one
shareholder,
ChemChina.
ChemChina says it intends to relist
a minority stake in the company in
the future.
In 2018, China’s larger
chemical conglomerate SinoChem
plans to merge and consolidate with
ChemChina. The new entity would
surpass Dow-DuPont as the world’s
largest chemical company. In sum,
ChemChina owns Syngenta which
retains the rights to Golden Rice. A
transfer of these rights to other
interests is not planned at the
moment, but this could change in
the future.
Golden Rice – Outperformed by
natural beta-carotene sources
For the past two decades,
creators and proponents of golden
rice have continuously highlighted
the project as critical to alleviate
widespread VAD, a problem in many
developing countries. It is true that
Vitamin A deficiency remains one of
the common forms of malnutrition
in many poor and developed
countries, especially in Africa and
SouthEast Asia. According to the
World Health Organisation (WHO),
an estimated 250 million preschool
children are vitamin-A deficient.
Poverty and lack of purchasing
power are identified as major
12
causes of malnutrition, including
VAD. These underlying issues will
never be addressed by Golden Rice.
The
direct
use
and
commercialisation of Golden Rice
is hence quite alarming. In February
2009, news broke that the Golden
Rice project had carried out tests
at a school in Hunan province,
China, involving 68 pupils aged from
six to eight. Twenty-three of the
children received the genetically-
engineered rice with their school
food, although it had never been
tested in any feeding studies on
adverse effects on health. This
triggered a public debate; the issue
was about whether it was ethically
and medically responsible to conduct
such tests on humans without
previous animal feeding trials.
Despite the controversy around
direct feeding trials to children, IRRI
and PhilRice pushed through and
further submitted an application for
direct feeding trials to the Philippines’
Department of Agriculture-Bureau
of Plant Industry, in February 2017.
Meanwhile, according to a source
at BRRI, feeding trials to children
are also planned to take place
between 2018 and 2019 in
Bangladesh, with the help of the
Hellen Keller institute, a partner
organisation of the Golden Rice
Humanitarian Board, once the open
field trials are concluded.
US FDA concluded that the
level of beta-carotene in Golden
Rice is too low to warrant a nutrient
content claim. This reflects the
failure and futility of GM Golden
Rice to address malnutrition and
Vitamin A Deficiency (VAD).
Do we really need Golden Rice
to curb VAD?
The Philippines has managed
to slash its VAD levels among
vulnerable sectors with conventional
nutrition programmes. According to
data by the Philippines National
Nutrition Council, there was a
significant decrease in VAD cases
between 2003 and 2008, where
incidence of VAD on children aged
6 months to 5 years-old were
dropped from 40.1% in 2003 to
15.2% in 2008. In the case of
pregnant women, the incidence
dropped from 17.5% to 9.5% and
for lactating mothers from 20.1% to
6.4%.
In Bangladesh, according to
the National Nutrition Survey by the
Ministry of Health and Family
Welfare, in the mid-1990s, 44% of
the entire population had met their
Vitamin A requirements through
diet. Further, between 1995 and
2005 the prevalence of VAD in
Bangladesh has been lowered to
22% among children and 23%
among pregnant women. The
Bangladesh Ministry of Health and
Welfare Service pointed out that
supplementation with Vitamin A-rich
capsules has been the most cost
effective short-term measure to
tackle VAD, combined with dietary
improvements through dietary
diversification and nutrition
education.
A similar situation can be found
in Indonesia, where Vitamin A
capsules are given twice a year to
children aged 6 to 59 months. The
latest VAD census, conducted in
2011, showed that VAD level were
already below the level considered
as a public nutrition issue, meaning
it was no longer a national health
issue.
Based on IRRI’s documents,
Golden Rice contains less than
10% of an equivalent amount of
beta-carotene in carrots. As
mentioned above, even the US FDA
took notice of the Golden Rice’s low
beta-carotene content. Citing the
IRRI report, the average beta-
carotene of Golden Rice is a measly
1.26 μg/g. The already meagre
beta-carotene content in GR2E can
also degrade over time, as shown
by a study in 2017.20 Only 60% of
the beta-carotene content is
retained in Golden Rice after three
weeks in storage, and just 13% after
10 weeks. In Australia, the network
Mothers are Demystifying Genetic
Class Struggle