Posted on 06/10/2014 6:11:40 AM PDT by artichokegrower
A University of California report has exposed the injustice that prohibits a genetically engineered additive to rice. Without it the death of millions of children has occurred, notably in Africa and India.
The researcher opinion lays the blame for the international prohibition of producing golden rice through genetic engineering to powerful forces that hide behind environmentalism. California, of course, is one of the world’s major rice producers, ready to supply the vitamin enriched product, especially for export.
(Excerpt) Read more at westernfarmpress.com ...
Ultimately we need to stop funding third world countries. No money, no food. Socialism doesn’t work. Those in power are living well off of our charity while their subjects perish. The people in these countries at some point must revolt like our founders did, and then there will be no need for golden rice, or any other type of social service.
The selling of GMO rice is all about money.
Monsanto and other transnational corporations seek to open foreign markets for their products to expand their revenues.
This is not about starving children, it is about greedy, liberal American businessmen.
Nations have every right to decide if they wish to accept GMO food.
BINGO!!!
Vitamin A precursors are found in many many vegetables. Why aren’t they able to grow any of these vegetables there?
My kids love squash. It takes 40-50d to grow a squash plant to maturity. Then it bears for several months. In tropical Africa, they could bear for months and months and months because there aren’t any freezes.
Lots of vegs have vitamin A precursors. Why must they only get it via GMO rice?
Is the problem lack of GMO rice, or political instability? Because GMO rice won’t do anything to help political instability, the same warlords that are stealing the rice now will just steal the new rice.
This is more about marketing than about actually helping people. Yes, golden rice has beta carotene, and yes, the human body can convert beta carotene into vitamin A, but that does not mean that that golden rice will have any significant impact if added to the diet of people who are vitamin A deficient.
See, here’s the thing. A is a fat-soluble vitamin. It doesn’t process or absorb in the absence of fat, and the beta carotene conversion also depends on the presence of fat. That’s why most vegans are A-deficient, even when they are eating plenty of carrots and kale - they’re eating too low-fat a diet for the conversion to happen at any meaningful rate.
Same thing with the poverty-stricken who can afford nothing but rice - their diets are generally very low in healthy animal fats, and their deficiencies in A is driven more by that than by any shortage of beta carotene in their diets.
And for that, there’s no easy fix.
Spending that same money on one cod liver oil capsule/day for these kids would achieve much more. But it wouldn’t line the pockets of someone selling proprietary technology.
You are correct. The two main causes of starvation is government corruption and war, not lack of produce.
Golden rice! Followed by the Golden Rice Famine, when one GMO strain monopolizes and then fails.
The rice with human genes
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-440302/The-rice-human-genes.html
March 2007
Human genes engineered into experimental GMO rice being grown in Kansas
http://www.naturalnews.com/035745_GMO_rice_human_genes_Kansas.html
May 2012
Pharmed Rice
http://www.alive.com/articles/view/21722/pharmed_rice
January 2008
So you prefer to permanently medicalize a nutrition problem, line the pockets of the pill manufacturers, and empower an expanding bureaucracy, as opposed to improving the nutritional content of a crop and allowing people to better feed themselves?
Here is a quoted comment from the article’s site:
“This is a very misleading article which attempts to paint any opposition to GMOs as some sort of ‘elitist’ move by a fortunate few...I’ve been working for over 17 years in Malawi, Africa on issues of nutrition and food security, and can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth. Here in Malawi, Africa we face high levels of nutritional deficiencies including Vitamin A and iron. We also have a nutritional ‘stunting’ rate which affects 47% of the nation’s children under the age of 5. These problems, however, have nothing to do with a lack of access to genetically engineered crops, but rather with an incessant push towards the monocropped production of maize (corn). Despite the potential for year-round and seasonal production of nutritious food crops, many local farmers have been encouraged to sacrifice diversity in favor of a once-a-year harvest of maize. Despite several consecutive years of surplus maize harvests, our malnutrition rates have remained steady. There are literally hundreds of local foods that farmers and families could be utilizing to eliminate nutritional deficiencies, but instead we find the nation’s fields sitting in a state of ‘food deserts’ for 11 months out of the year. Now, as the limited nutritional nature of monocropped agriculture is taking its toll, we find people turning to genetic engineering to try to adapt the world’s plants and animals to very unhealthy and chemical-based systems of production. There is no need, whatsoever, to genetically engineer a nutrient like Vitamin A into plants which it does not naturally occur. Just grow and eat nutritious foods! As we move further and further away from natural solutions, we find nations, like Malawi, setting up expensive—often donor funded—programs to fortify unhealthy foods like cooking oil and sugar with Vitamin A. This is not a sustainable or a healthy approach to good nutrition. Solutions exist, but we need to stop promoting the idea that all the world’s nutrition should come from a limited handful of artificially engineered crops.”
Perhaps you missed my comment about many vegetables, that will grow locally to the problem, being a source of the same nutrient.
And cod liver oil isn’t ‘patentable’. Can be sold by any manufacturer. And, contains the fat necessary to properly absorb the ‘fat soluble’ vitamins. GMO rice is none of these.
If you think the cause of malnutrition in Africa is a lack of GMO rice you’ve never ever stepped foot in Africa. I grew up there.
Good intentions and white rice killed thousands when it was deemed superior to native brown rice. Read the history on modern white rice versus brown rice in Asia.
I’ve been saying this for 30 years. The whole environmental movement is about depopulation... well, ego first. Of course, “they” are superior and deserve to live but the rest of us are definitely disposable.
Could you show us the ‘money trail’ for golden rice?
If they are expanding their revenues so quickly, I would like to purchase the stock.
IIRC the main benefactor here is the Swiss Health Service?
I don’t think so.
IIRC this one is FREE!
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