'NEW GM RICE WILL PREVENT BLINDNESS'

By: Rashmee Roshan Lall, The Times of India, March 29, 2005

British scientists have developed a new genetically modified strain of sunflower-yellow, vitamin-enriched rice for free transfer to countries like India in the hope it will prevent millions of children in the developing world from going blind.

The new variety of so-called "golden rice" produces 20 times more beta-carotene than previous varieties of the grain, which was first created five years ago in a Swiss laboratory as a triumph of humanist-science.

But on Monday, doubts were expressed by agricultural experts and environmental groups just hours after Syngenta, a leading agribusiness spread across 90 countries, announced its triumphant discovery of the super-strength golden grain.

According to the WHO, nearly 500,000 children go blind each year because of vitamin A deficiency.

But campaigners for sustainable agriculture and development said the new golden rice was unlikely to prevent the vitamin deficiency. They said the new golden rice would merely be an even more powerful attempt at destroying bio-diversity in the developing world. In 2000, when the new transgenic sunshine yellow rice was developed at the Institute of Plant Sciences in Zurich, the award-winning campaigner Dr Vandana Shiva derided its supposed qualities as "a miracle cure for blindness."

Shiva, who slammed what she termed the "corporatisation of rice", had said the new golden rice was "based on a false premise." She added caustically that the proposed transfer of the genetically modified rice to India was likely to be meaningless because "it will meet less than 1% of the required daily intake (of Vitamin A)."

India had an estimated 200,000 varieties of rice until the Green Revolution was believed to have destroyed the diversity. But Syngenta, whose scientists worked on the new miracle food at its laboratories in the UK, said it believed the new super-strength rice would be made available for free to research centres across Asia because it was likely to redress nutritional deficiencies in children. Countries like India are expected to conduct its field trials if given the go-ahead by government.

The new rice strain is created by introducing genes from daffodils and bacteria into a rice strain to produce a yellow grain with high levels of beta-carotene. But its critics say it strikes at the very heart of Asian culture, where rice is a food staple and often said to be tantamount to life itself.