Posted on 04/17/2018 9:55:37 AM PDT by Kaslin
Golden Rice was declared safe for consumption by Canada recently. This has huge implications for the rest of the world, where Golden Rice can be vital resource in tackling vitamin A deficiency and malnutrition.
Genetically modified (GM) crops are engineered to display traits that are otherwise absent or subdued in natural crops. For example, gene modification results in crops that are highly resistant to diseases and more accustomed to extreme weather conditions. Sometimes, these crops also contain increased nutritional value.
Golden Rice, also known as Provitamin A Biofortified Rice Event GR2E, has strikingly higher levels of Provitamin A than other commercially available rice varieties. The name may have been derived from its golden yellow color, but it is certainly more valuable to our food security than gold.
Being a powerful antioxidant, Vitamin A plays a key role in growth, reproduction, eyesight and immune system health. Vitamin A deficiency is more prevalent in developing countries, where it causes preventable childhood blindness and amplifies the risk of death from other common childhood illnesses such as diarrhea.
Golden Rice can certainly reduce the magnitude and frequency of Vitamin A deficiency as it acts as a Vitamin A supplement. The rice can thus act as a preventive element against the death and disease due to vitamin A deficiency in developing countries.
However, GM crops such as Golden Rice face constant opposition from anti-GM crusaders who accuse these crops of being dangerous to human health.
The claims of anti-GM groups are false and baseless. Particularly, their accusations on Golden Rice lack scientific credibility, besides acting as a major hurdle in the fight against malnutrition and global food insecurity.
On March 16, Health Canada—the department of the government of Canada with responsibility for national public health—approved the genetically engineered Golden Rice as safe for human consumption.
It was a pleasant coincidence that Golden Rice was approved just a week before the birthday of Norman Borlaug—the man who revolutionized the use of GM crops, eventually helping billions of people afford a daily meal and sustaining billions of lives to this day.
This approval comes after a robust scientific assessment done by scientists with expertise in molecular biology, microbiology, toxicology, chemistry, and nutrition.
The assessment complied with scientific principles approved internationally by the World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the regulatory bodies in the United States, the European Union, Australia, and Japan.
The assessment results showed that Golden Rice had the same nutritional property as other commercially available rice varieties, except for the increased provitamin A levels. Further, it displayed no new risk to human health and has no potential to create or amplify allergies.
Unlike Health Canada’s robust scientific assessment, the claims of anti-GM advocacy groups fall short of credibility, as they have been in the past.
The approval of Golden Rice by Health Canada is a lethal blow to one of the many myths that are propagated by anti-GM activists. Developing countries should seize the momentum by declaring Golden Rice safe for consumption in their respective countries.
ALL food crops are genetically modified.......................
In issue after issue, it is the left that is anti-science. Whether globull warming and EPA fake science to further the political commie politics. Against GM crops, well, just because is about all I can discern from their objections.
Believing science is like voting instead of scientific method. And now believing math and science are too rigorous and therefore exclude women and minorities.
I like sushi rice, and if this golden rice tastes as good and has the same texture, I’d certainly give it a go, unless it was a lot more expensive.
I’m pretty sure you can find some kind of greens that will grow anywhere on the planet that rice can be grown. Eat some greens for your vitamin A deficiency. Unless of course your civilization just sucks at growing food. In that case, you have a different deficiency.
Personally, I really like cooked rice turned a golden color by saffron
I predict we are about to get another demonstration of that last in South Africa.
I like the rice from the local Japanese restaurant.
I know that's what we call it around our house.
Agree-greens are a better choice all around-also, is there no way to deliver vitamin supplements in plastic bottles to these vitamin-deficient people-like the rest of the world uses? Or would that make too much more sense than expecting people who don’t seem able to plant and grow any food crop to enthusiastically embrace this rice and make it thrive?
It seems to me that it would be easier and cheaper just to send a fleet of trucks loaded with vitamins and a nutritionist or two to explain the need for vitamins in simple language and teach these people how to get a glass of water, open a vitamin bottle and take a capsule with the water-sounds like a better plan than trying to teach them to grow some new variety of rice when they haven’t been able to do sustained cultivation of any other crop they have been shown how to grow and harvest...
The only golden rice I’m going to eat is if I cook it fresh with saffron and other spices-otherwise it is only organic brown rice on my table...
I like all rice, sushi rice the best. But, I can’t eat much rice because of the carbs, I am a diabetic. If rice wasn’t so full of carbs, I would eat it every day.
We were doing grafting for thousands of years. Not the same as doing it in a lab.
....and cross pollinating.....................
GM Genetically Modified rice, a software engineer would call that a bug, virus or a defect.
“ALL food crops are genetically modified.......................”
Every single bite you eat has been genetically modified one way or the other. Every single bite.
L
It’s all about the money. GMO means you have to buy seeds every year in order to grow something. Your food will be all in the hands of Monsanto. I’m worried for the future.
These days, yes they are. All of them.
Funny-I grew up on it and now my wife of 8 years simply loves it! When we first met she detested all rice...
The left is still deeply disappointed that their Malthusian predictions did not come to pass back in the 1970s. Their dreams of being in charge were thwarted by a quiet Minnesota scientist named Norman Borlaug.
Modern GMO techniques are merely the next stage in Borlaug's work. White man may not be able to jump very well but, for some strange reason, he knows how to grow heap many food supplies.
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