Golden Rice Regulatory Delays May Cause Millions of Deaths
Ingo Potrykus, inventor of the vitamin A-enriched golden rice says that although
production of the rice is solved, regulatory delays would prevent Asians
benefiting for many years yet. By transforming the indica rice IR64, they have
produced a rice variety that would be applicable across most of South East Asia.
"We could give this out today," said Potrykus, chair of the
International Humanitarian Board for Golden Rice. "This could reduce
malnutrition safely and sustainably." However, regulatory delays were
"in essence causing the unnecessary deaths of millions of people,"
said Potrykus. He expects it to take 3-4 years for the rice to make it through
the regulatory procedures.
Potrykus says that around 200g of rice could give 100% of the recommended daily
allowance of vitamin A, according to one estimates. While the final figure might
be slightly lower, it was clear that the levels were sufficient to make a major
contribution to reducing vitamin A deficiency in Asia. Greenpeace had
suggested in the past that unrealistic amounts would have to be eaten to get
near the RDA level.
In addition to vitamin A, the golden rice team has been exploring expression of
genes to raise iron levels, vitamin E and whether they can produce a
high-quality protein rice with enhanced levels of 10 amino acids. However,
Potrykus says that he's been advised that the regulatory issues associated with
rice containing even more genes and traits would make it near-impossible to
approve it.
He is working with regulatory agencies of the Asian countries who want to
distribute golden rice to try and co-ordinate a harmonised regulatory approach
to the approval process. "My task is to find a unified approach" he
says. Governments have indicated their financial support for making the rice
available to farmers, but this depended on overcoming the regulatory obstacles.
Potrykus says that regulators are influenced by political pressure, and that the
issues put to them by political groups are based on "emotions, not
science." Thus far they've been unable to field test the rice, because of
regulatory concerns.
Potrykus says that they have agreement on all the intellectual property issues
surrounding golden rice, which would allow free licensing to farmers so long as
they don't export it or profit excessively from it. Meanwhile Syngenta has
the commercial rights to develop the technology. He feels that the project has
been an excellent example of a public-private partnership that has real benefits
for the poor - while they might have achieved it eventually via a public route,
it would have taken much longer.
Could there be a developed world golden rice? "There certainly could be a
market for nutritionally optimised crops," says Potrykus. He pointed to the
fact that a nutritionally enriched rice could help reduce the macular
degeneration found in older people in the developed world. This eye problem was
less of a concern in the developing world as people tended not to live long
enough to encounter it. However, offering nutritionally improved GM crops
depended on an end to the "hysteria" of European consumers over GM.
European attitudes had meant that Thailand had decided not to be part of the
golden rice project because they had been warned by European importers that
growing GM rice could affect their ability to export other varieties of rice.
Similar factors had been at play over the Zambian government's decision not to
allow GM maize into the country as food aid.
He described the impact of European views as one of the "worst cases of
neocolonialism".
From AgBiotechNet.com, March 19, 2003
