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Thousands of children could die after court backs campaign group over GM crop in Philippines, scientists warn
Scientists have warned that a court decision to block the growing of the genetically modified (GM) crop Golden Rice in the Philippines could have catastrophic consequences. Tens of thousands of children could die in the wake of the ruling, they argue.
The Philippines had become the first country – in 2021 – to approve the commercial cultivation of Golden Rice, which was developed to combat vitamin A deficiency, a major cause of disability and death among children in many parts of the world.
But campaigns by Greenpeace and local farmers last month persuaded the country’s court of appeal to overturn that approval and to revoke this. The groups had argued that Golden Rice had not been shown to be safe and the claim was backed by the court, a decision that was hailed as “a monumental win” by Greenpeace.
Many scientists, however, say there is no evidence that Golden Rice is in any way dangerous. More to the point, they argue that it is a lifesaver.
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I’m so fucking concerned about climate change… But I can’t vote Green because of their stupid, anti-scientific stances on two issues: GMOs and nuclear power. For context, I’m in Germany, where there’s very public hysteria about both. The general public still holds absurdly distorted and misinformed views, so none of the green-aligned parties are ballsy enough to hold positions on them that are in any way nuanced. It’s super frustrating.
Both GMOs and nuclear can be used to mitigate climate change too… :(
Exactly! The fact that we’re shutting down our reactors all the while still burning coal is so backwards.
At a certain point I think governments should start investigating Greenpeace. The policies they support are exactly what the fossil fuels lobby would want.
They are anti-nuclear which effectively means pro-coal.
They are anti-GMOs which effectively means more fertilizers made from natural gas.
Polluting our water with nuclear waste does not help combat climate change
If nuclear waste DID pollute water, it would still help combat climate change, specifically the warming of the earth. It doesn’t pollute water, and nuclear waste can be stored deep underground or reused. But we are out of time to find a “perfect solution” nuclear power is the ONLY option to provide renewable and carbon neutral base load power that other forms of “green electricity” will NEVER be able to compete with.
It’s coal or nukes. You better figure out which one you want fast.
Bro imagine having the balls to be so ignorant yet so brave
That is why coal plants should be closed
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You, redisdead, already used this personal attack in this thread. Where are the mods when you need one? Thought this was a place to discuss ideas not attack the intelligence of those that disagree
The greens being anti nuclear is a good thing. We dont have the storage for the nuclear waste. The greens in germany are the party with the best energy politics. I wont vote for them because they are pro deportation though.
We absolutely do have the storage.
This is spectacularly misinformed.
Bullshit we don’t have the storage. Fucking NIMBYs. 80% of our planet is covered in water, and at its deepest point there is no life. And the waste absolutely can be reused. Think, Draeron, think. Why is nuclear waste dangerous? It’s dangerous because it still contains usable energy. It’s still fissile. It’s only “waste” because the reactor it came out of cannot fission it any further. So we put it into a newer reactor that can. And we keep using it until it’s rendered inert.
They’re likely talking about other nuclear waste besides spent fuel rods.
They’re still wrong, but it makes a bit more sense from that perspective.
They might be talking about waste that radiology departments produce, but that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the waste generated by the energy sector.
No, I meant the radioactive waste water and such. There’s different levels of radioactive waste that nuclear plants produce, and it’s not just spent fuel.
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The argument against Golden Rice should have nothing to do with GMO and everything to do with monocultures.
Greenpeace is fucked in the head.
That’s not their argument though. Their argument is that despite the benevolent sub-$10k payment free licence, at the end of the day it’s still a product that the independent farmers are beholden to. That, plus rice is windpollinating. So it’s very easy for it to cross pollinate adjecent fields and potentially outperform heirloom species against the farmers’ will.
It’s not exactly the end of the world to implement terminator seeds… The reason it hasn’t been implemented is because it’s not an issue. This is a non-issue that’s getting blown out of proportion.
Farmers will opt to maximize profits given all else equal. The license is a cost of goods sold and gets factored in when farmers decide what to plant. Farmers aren’t forced to plant golden rice.
Seed patent holders have previously, successfully, sued farmers who inadvertantly grew patented plants they did not intentionally plant, but arrived on their property through natural means.
The point here is, some farmers will be ‘forced’ to plant golden rice by circumstance, not intention. Are they liable for that, or not? In the US and Canada, historically, they have been.
Seed patent holders have previously, successfully, sued farmers who inadvertantly grew patented plants they did not intentionally plant, but arrived on their property through natural means.
I’ve heard this claim many times, and have yet to see anyone provide even a single case of it happening. Please don’t try to cite Monsanto v Schmeiser. It’s amazing how often that is used as the example when both the farmer very deliberately planted the seeds, and did not even argue that it was inadvertent in court.
I’m replying to you instead of the first reply to this comment because I would also really appreciate seeing information regarding cases where something like natural migration of seeds has led to a won lawsuit.
https://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/files/seed-giants_final_04424.pdf
In most cases the outcomes have been settlements, most farmers simple can’t afford to sustain the fight. I think there have been some that made it through the court system and ended up working against the farmers.
I haven’t read this whole report, but I read the relevant section starting on page 29. It was sourced from this Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto-sues-farmers-seed-patents
Citation needed. And don’t give me any Salon crap. I want the exact incident in question where a farmer was sued over this and lost.
It’s pointless because literally every time I ask people to produce this mythical court case I get some salon article about how it is possible to occur one day.
Fix the laws?
No. It’s the GMOs who are wrong.
Fix the laws?
Good joke!
That, plus rice is windpollinating. So it’s very easy for it to cross pollinate adjecent fields and potentially outperform heirloom species against the farmers’ will.
This is true with any type of rice then, and is completely separate from gmos.
Not sure if this applies to this situation. But there have been instance where non-GMO farmers have had their crops cross pollinated, so are now growing a non-GMO/GMO hybrid. Then because these plants are patented or whatever, they’ve been sued by Monstanto and friends for growing their crop without permission.Edit: might be misinformed on this one, doing some reading about this nowAnd for the record, I’m not anti-GMO, I’m anti-GMO Corporation. I have no problem eating them if I’m not supporting the evil corporations that usually develop them.
Sidebar, humans have been genetically modifying food since we started to farm, the wild version of most food we eat is unrecognizable from the tabletop one.
Yeah… There’s a bigger question too that is, why can’t other foods containing Vitamin A be supplied to the starving people of the Philippines? There are so many sources.
Let’s consider how fucked it is that even considering introducing this crop to the wild is necessary.
I’ve previously supported golden rice, but you’ve changed my mind. We should just be doing more to support developing nations directly. The world has sufficient abundance we shouldn’t need to take these dangerous shortcuts. Not yet.
Try me when we’re closer to Mad Max earth.
Don’t you think giving them the tools they need to improve things is better than making them dependent on consistent outside charity?
That’s exactly what I’m saying we should do. Brown rice ironically while it is food, might be like giving a baby an economic pacifier instead of trade milk and expecting it to grow. The Philippines has a range of biodiverse crops and other commodities that have more value than just the one food to feed them all, which would undercut the market and stifle local knowledge over time.
That said someone here suggested a more advanced plan to seed the beta-carotine gene into the native species, which is awesome in theory, but could create patent law violations and just generally be incredibly risky to the very biodiversity we’re trying to protect.
This is why I think while the science is very cool, we should avoid such irreversible treatments unless it’s a last resort.
Mosquitos on the other hand. Love the idea of genetically editing those fuckers out of existence. As the world inevitably warms, malaria is only going to spread further and wider. We should be getting ahead of that catastrophic future while we have the chance.
How about we just introduce them to carrots as a crop?
Have you ever considered that when you have an idea which seems to be an extremely simple solution to a problem that it might be more complicated than that and those closer to the situation with actual knowledge of the particulars probably already thought of it?
So tell me what the experts say about eating foods such as Leafy green vegetables (kale, spinach, broccoli), orange and yellow vegetables (carrots, sweet potatoes, pumpkin and other winter squash, summer squash), Tomatoes, Red bell pepper, Cantaloupe, mango, Beef liver, Fish oils, Milk, Eggs
All of which are sources of vitamin A.
I’m not arguing that carrots aren’t a good source of vitamin A.
I’m asking you if you’ve considered why those closer to the situation haven’t just gone with carrots. You don’t even know what you don’t know. What other constraints are we working with? Do those things grow well there?
What’s it like going through life thinking you know everything?
Rice is easy to store and transport because it doesn’t really spoil. Is basically a supercrop in that regard.
Sure, but that doesn’t really address the argument in making. It’s a lazy way out that benefits the western world for its low cost and the fact is carrying a patented gene modification. We should be doing more, not relying on risky shortcuts.
Maybe one day all rice cultivars will be golden and the world we’ll be better off for it. But if the history of other GM crops is anything to go by, it sucks for the environment, and low prices screw local farmers over.
Rice is great because it is something they already eat and know how to cultivate. This is about as direct and unobtrusive support of developing nations can be.
What about when rice prices crash and local small scale farmers go out of business?
Why would I keep following the moving goalposts if you won’t even admit the previous point was reasonably addressed?
I don’t follow. What goal posts have I shifted? I don’t deny that rice is easy. My point is that it’s a shortcut that could have other negative consequences that more funding could avoid.
The question was about why we can’t provide direct support to these countries, and I explained to you why targeting rice makes sense…and then you completely shifted gears to driving farmers out of business with no recognition of this point.
If there argument is so good why not getting people to vote for it instead of using the court system to force it?
When your ideals are in direct opposition to the well being of people its time to rethink your ideals, not double down on them
No, I’ve been convinced that gmos are bad and so fuck any evidence and the opinion of experts, they are bad!
Also how dumb are conservatives for rejecting the opinion of experts during the pandemic? What a bunch of sheep!
Imagine that we actually do colonize Mars. The first colonists are likely going to eat GMOs, because the only alternative is red sand.
We have been modifying crops by cross breeding and selective breeding since we started growing and harvesting crops, this is not the same as GMO. GMO is not bad in so far as a food source that can overcome environmental changes quickly. GMO is bad when it can pollinate non GMO crops thereby stealing a traditional farmers ability to replant from their seeds as they now have a trademarked gene that they cannot use. Monsanto is terrible for this.
GMO is bad when it can pollinate non GMO crops thereby stealing a traditional farmers ability to replant from their seeds as they now have a trademarked gene that they cannot use. Monsanto is terrible for this.
And you won’t be able to provide a single case of this ever happening. Because it hasn’t.
Also, just as importantly, this is not limited to GMO, as you can patent traditionally modified crops as well, and they could pollinate non modified crops posing the same exact “problem.”
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I have to say, patents are my only real concerns regarding GMOs.
Most of the other concerns can be tested/ruled out, but patents could absolutely fuck up entire continents and literally enslave millions of small farmers.
It’s 100% within the realm of possibilities that Monsanto puts a gene drive in their crops so suddenly every plant in a 20km radius produces “patented” seeds.
They don’t need a “gene drive”. Planting their GMO seeds in one field is guaranteed to contaminate the neighbouring fields. Then they can sue the neighbouring farmers, and steal both their crops and land.
They’ve been using this tactic in hostile takeovers of farmland since the 90’s.
They should test it and rule out the health concerns. No one should leave room for Greenpeace to make scientific claims. If its safety hasn’t been studied and proven, then Greenpeace are doing their job of forcing that to happen.
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I don’t like Greenpeace, but these are good arguments.
One thing that I will say on this is that I find the idea that a company can patent life is beyond repugnant. These corporations aren’t designing these things from the ground up. They are doing the exact same thing farmers have done for thousands of years which is mixing breeds together to get the result they want. Only real difference now is that they can take a snapshot of the DNA and go to the patent office and say “Mine!”.
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All that except contamination could be solved by just not using it if there’s a better option for a given farmer.
Greenpeace, as usual, argues against GM by jesting towards a nebulous cabal of shady globalist BigAg companies. They are endlessly malicious and no amount of benefit can ever be a convincing reason to take even one step back on this issue. This is a classic case of paranoia and it cannot be reasoned with.
A quick reality check on some of those points. Many of them are based on a paranoid belief that the Golden Rice will somehow invade and take over. We are discussing introducing a new variety, not erasing any - farmers will continue to grow other varieties. Thus, many of the arguments about monoculture and control over seed fall apart. Syngenta have excluded smallholder farmers from paying licensing fees, so they’d get the seeds are a reasonable price. Lastly, countries which grow GM also grow organic crops - the farmers fearing losing their licenses are swept up in the paranoia. There is also no evidence of GM genes finding their way into other varieties in any meaningful amount. If this was a common occurrence, maintaining any discrete variety would be impossible (and we’ve been doing it for over a century).
I’m not sure man. You make it sound like crazy conspiracy theories, and they are to some extent. But Monsanto has absolutely sued people for planting their genetically modified seeds, for example https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/business/monsanto-victorious-in-genetic-seed-case.html.
I agree with you (and other posters) that Greenpeace is overblowing the dangers of GMO (though I’m not an expert, not even close, so take this as the uneducated opinion it is). But I still think it’s good they blocked them in this case. To me it’s a fact that these companies will try to use these new crops to exploit the farmers. Because that’s literally the business model of Monsanto and all these fucking companies. And long term that’s worse for the food security of the people in third world countries, no matter what neo liberals say.
They have, but it’s never really been as bad as “the wind blew the pollen.”
The guy intentionally bought what he knew were Monsanto seeds from a grain elevator to plant in order to get them cheaper. That’s not a problem of “evil corporation sues unwitting farmer”. That’s “farmer tries to circumvent contract he signed.”
In the face of the established historical record of over 100 lawsuits brought against farmers, the amended PUBPAT complaint asserts, “Monsanto implicitly acknowledges that its transgenic seeds can contaminate the property of non-transgenic farmers,” but in its asserted “commitment” to not sue farmers over “inadvertent,” and “trace” amounts of contamination, the company fails to define either term. Therefore, the Complaint argues, “the clear implication is that Monsanto indeed intends to assert its transgenic seed patents against certified organic and non-transgenic farmers who come to possess more than ‘trace amounts’ of Monsanto’s transgenic seed, even if it is not their fault.”
When Monsanto sued family farmer Percy Schmeiser in Canada over contamination caused by transgenic seed blown off a passing neighbor’s truck, it cost him a half million dollars to fight them, and he had to mortgage his farm to raise the money, Patterson recalls. In the process, he lost control over 50 years of his own traditional, non-transgenic seed development work, according to Patterson and published reports telling the Schmeiser story. “Monsanto reportedly spent $4 million on their case against Schmeiser,” Patterson says. Percy Schmeiser told him Monsanto had 19 lawyers at one point in the courtroom up against his own single lawyer. “In the school yard and in the NFL, that is called ‘piling on,’” he concludes. https://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/press-releases/763/family-farmers-amplify-complaint-against-monsantos-gmos-reinforcing-their-arguments-with-two-dozen-additional-plaintiffs
They don’t own anything, the modified something that came with the planet, and they want everyone on the planet to be forced to use it, and them to pay them for the privilege. I’ve never been to Msto HQ but I’d give Dollars to Donuts that that is printed on the wall.
Sorry for the late response, busy day hahaha. A few things:
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Please don’t get hung out on the particular examole I picked. I just googled Monsanto seed lawsuit and picked the first example. But there are so many many more examples.
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I mean, you don’t see that’s the problem I was pointing out exactly? Again, I’m not against GMOs themselves (though again, totally unneducated opinion). My concern, as someone from a third world country, is precisely with the laws and economic pressure these companies use to exploit people in our countries using this technology.
Let me explain how this works in my experience:
- Monsanto or any of these companies create a new GMO. This GMO is usually actually better at something than traditional crops. Though here better is usually economically better, as in cheaper to produce.
- These companies start preassuring every farmer in our countries to use their seeds and crops. Usually this is done through economic preassure. That is usually they price their seeds so they are cheaper to use than traditional crops (on it’s own, not terrible). There is usually some preassure thorugh laws anf marketing to force people to switch too.
- The farmers using these new crops will outperform, in an economical sense, the farmers that keep using the traditional crops. They will produce better crops for less money for a while. Usually the ones who survuve this are the big farmers, most family farms can’t compete here. After some time of this we end in a situation where all the crops are replaced with the new GMO, patented crop, giving these companies a monopoly over our food.
If things ended here it would be okish, though I wiould still hate it hahaha. But we all know that companies will always exploit their monopoly positions as much as possible. So this usually ends with even more hunger in our countries even though we now technicslly have better crops. So yeah, I think you are wrong. If our onky options are to continue using old “inneficient” crops, or this shit, I prefer the traditional crops. So good on Greenpeace for blocking this.
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Being against GMOs is like wanting to ban electric cars because Elon Musk is a dickhead.
Being against GMO taking over our food supply chain by massive, dubious corporations with a long history of absolute fuckery is the same as banning some mildly better form of transportation?
Criminalizing a food via the court instead of by democracy is issue here.
Your buddies at Greenpeace couldn’t produce good arguments that the product was dubious, so they used Western money, judge shopped, and out lawyered a poor nation. They get to decide for the people there. Individual farmers don’t get to decide what to do with their land, people don’t get to decide how their own nation is to be run,. Greenpeace came in and used forklift piles of money to force their will on the Pinay.
This is why people fucking hate them. The self-appointed moral authority of the human race answerable to no one but themselves.
The funny part is when megacorps do the exact same fucking thing, you’re cheering on the sidelines.
I am? Please show me the date and time and comment in question. Unless you meant “you” in the sense of the word “imaginary person”.
You’re literally cheering for Bayer in another comment in this chain.
Please present it.
When you present where I talked about GMOs are unnatural and ungood in this comment chain: https://lemmy.world/comment/10308725
You are exactly the type of person I’m talking about 🤦♂️.
The technology of GMOs is awesome, it will help us solve several problems, some related to food supplies, and other problems in different areas like healthcare. We can develop food with more nutrients. Crops resistant to most common plagues. We use it to create insulin without needing to harvest tons of pig’s pancreas. The technology itself is completely safe and full of potential.
But most uneducated people think that “GMOs = mOnSaNtO” and want to ban all of them only by the actions of a company that no longer exists (yeah, now owned by Bayer, but whatever). And even most of that bad reputation was caused by myths and defamation. Just because one company that developed GMOs was a dickhead doesn’t mean that GMOs are bad, in the same way that electric cars should not be banned because of Elon Musk.
Edit to add: like with any technology, it needs to be extensively regulated to prevent monopolies or other abuses.
Oh you’re so naive.
I love how you’re all like 'monsanto doesn’t exist they’re owned by Bayer a
As if Bayer was more reputable somehow.
We’re literally facing dangerous monopolies trying to corner the market of our basic needs. And you’re sitting here like YEAH TECHNOLOGY IS AWESOME AND SAFE LET’S GOOOOOOO.
Also, I have family that are large-scale farmers, so they have first-hand experience with agriculture practices and technology. I have other family members that are researchers on soil ecology and related fields. And I was a researcher (at a completely unrelated field, I admit) and I read lots of literature about the subject, because I had access to all scientific journals at my university. But yeah, “I’m naive”, lol.
Knowledge and naivety are two separate things.
Literally you are repeating the same argument. Come back when you have a new one.
I am repeating the same argument because the reply to my previous argument was ‘but what about this other greedy seedy company?’
I’ll have a new one when you guys have a new one.
This is fucking tragic. Golden rice hasn’t been proven safe? It’s fucking rice with a spliced gene to produce vitamin A. This is a life saver plain and simple. Monsanto is fucked for a whole host of reasons, but golden rice is not it. There has been study after study on it just to fucking prove that it’s beta-carotene survived cooking.
When Greenpeace started opposing GMOs that could be patented, I was on board, but they just attack any GMO now.
The idea is to extinguish the other variants, get into a monoculture, and in the future have them completely at Monsanto’s will. This product is patented. There’s no need for patented grains here. They can be helped through many other means and produces.
The GMO gene in Golden Rice is patented. It’s just licensed for use for free in developing countries on small hold farms. A monoculture of golden rice would be less diverse than the current wide range of heritage rice varieties, and there could be over reliance on it which could case issues if there was a blight. Theres some concern that spread of the genes could catch unaware farmers with legal issues, but it’s harder for rice genes to spread than most other crops, as they’re usually self-pollinating. The risks dont seem to outweigh the benefits in this case, but it is more complex than it appears on the surface level. Greenpeace doesn’t seem to be able to use scientific research to back its claims here, and is instead just staying true to it’s anti-GMO message.
actually, even tho rice is mostly self pollinating, it is also a wind pollinator
proven. there’s a list of new inventions that were proven safe in 1950. Do we think they were just idiots back then?
Also its about directing cash from the sale of ‘Golden rice’ far more than about having these folks afford good food.
https://grain.org/en/article/10-grains-of-delusion-golden-rice-seen-from-the-ground
I’m no expert but these folk are almost
While many doubt the ability of golden rice to eliminate vitamin A deficiency, the machinery is being set in motion to promote a GE strategy at the expense of more relevant approaches. The best chance of success in fighting vitamin A deficiency and malnutrition is to better use the inexpensive and nutritious foods already available, and in diversifying food production systems in the fields and in the household. The euphoria created by the Green Revolution greatly stifled research to develop and promote these efforts, and the introduction of golden rice will further compromise them. Golden rice is merely a marketing event. But international and national research agendas will be taken by it.
The promoters of golden rice say that they do not want to deprive the poor of the right to choose and the potential to benefit from golden rice. But the poor, and especially poor farmers, have long been deprived of the right to choose their means of production and survival. Golden rice is not going to change that, and nor will any other corporately-pushed GE crop. Hence, any further attempts at the commercial exploitation of hunger and malnutrition through the promotion of genetically modified foods should be strongly resisted.
golden rice had not been shown to be safe
Has regular rice? What about standing in the sun has that been shown to be safe? Has breathing?
This was the same reaction I had when the Covid vaccines were rolling out. “They haven’t been proven to be 100% safe and effective!” OK. Sure, but you know what is guaranteed to be bad for you? Covid. There are two choices here, and there’s a clear mitigation of harm with one option over the other.
It’s shocking that we’d rather see children die of treatable vitamin deficiencies than the off-chance that the food ‘might be unsafe’.
I believe pfizer? and some other pharma companies have now admitted to the non-zero risk for blood-clots and fatally-low platelet counts due to the vaccine. We still do not understand the full long-term impact of the vaccines. We need to stop the vaccine rollout and study the long-term and wider population effects now so that if in 10 or 20 or 30 years down the line if we start seeing people developing abnormal long-term systemic chronic effects due to the vaccines, we now have a MASSIVE study-patient-base available.
Medicine has to be RESPONSIBLY applied and while vaccinations are necessary they still have to be studied to death to ensure their safety and efficacy.
Private corporations DO NOT GET A FREE PASS.
I agree that those studies should be done. Studies should ALSO be done on people with unvaccinated covid infections, but we can’t do that on a large number of people, because they’re dead. The vaccinated people might have a ‘non-zero risk for blood clots’, but they’re still alive in the meantime.
Yeah, your chances to get blood clots due to vaccination are orders of magnitude lower than your chance to just die from covid.
Cool. Now there’s the question.
Covid itself is known to fuck with the body in a wide range of ways, creating severe long-term consequences for many. We know it’s true, and we know covid has way more lasting side effects than vaccines do.
What is the guarantee it doesn’t cause something very bad to you down the road? Maybe even something we don’t know yet? COVID-19 is not perfectly studied, and what is studied tells us it absolutely can cause problems down the road.
It’s also not safer by the virtue of being “natural” - viruses are essentially pieces of randomly changing encapsulated code injected into our bodies and reprogramming our cells. It could be anything, and I mean that.
Pfizer vaccine (or pretty much any approved covid vaccine for that matter) has little known side effects and is not expected to cause much more going forward.
From all the data we have now, vaccinating is a better pick both right now AND against future consequences.
Also, due to the fast pace of viral mutations, the vaccine will probably be completely useless in the 30 years you suggest.
Breathing has a 100% death rate.
No human has ever died on Mars - only ever on Earth.
Conclusion: Mars is safer than Earth.
You don’t even realize how amazingly stupid your response/argument is, do you?
Do you have any concept of how many times in human history, that an argument has basically boiled down to “its safe, stupid. Stop being a baby and use it!”, Only to find out years or even decades down the road that Oopsy Daisy, it wasnt as safe as was claimed?
Tetraethyllead being an excellent example, which I bet you would have voraciously argued in favor of at the time.
To be more specific, my above comment was more or less saying “see! I can make meaningless arguments too!”. Golden rice saves lives. Lots of things that save lives arent proven safe.
They’ve been doing that for two decades. Golden rice could have saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives by now. Especially the later versions we’re on now. Hopefully it doesn’t violate the self-promotion rules for me to link an article I wrote a long, long time ago on Golden Rice 3.0 and its improved benefits.
I haven’t kept up with the project since, I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re on 4.0 or beyond by now, the scientists involved have been working tirelessly for years to make the rice even better and more beneficial for the people who need it.
And anti-science idiots like Greenpeace have been fighting them every step of the way.
Honestly, I’m a large proponent of conversation and environmentalism. Hell, I sit on a land trust board, and have a very strong technical background in checks notes environmental science.
The thing I keep rolling my eyes at with Greenpeace is their seemingly complete lack of regard for science, like you point out. How can anyone take these guys seriously when most of what they do are stunts.
I doubt anyone would listen even if they did have the technical expertise they need, because support for environmental issues is paltry to begin with. However, it would give them a leg to stand on.
Thing is, these guys have a very narrow view on “environment”, but the conflict here is emblematic of basically everything regarding protection of nature.
Greenpeace is under the (not completely unfounded) impression, that every new technology is a wedge to slowly push the world towards doom. Just one more lane. Just one more gene changed. And so on. They are completely uncompromising, which is understandable to a certain degree.
However, the result is that perfect is the enemy of the good. Here in Germany we have conflicts between people who want to save the planet by installing wind turbines and people who want to save the local fauna by not installing wind turbines. The latter do have a point if you’re very myopic, but they don’t (want to) see that their actions will likely kill the entire species, not just a few individuals.
Golden rice could have saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives by now.
Serious question. If hundreds of lives were at stake, why were other mechanisms… such as just giving kids vitamin A, not apparently employed? Regardless of the merits of the opposition to this rice, why not pursue this on multiple fronts?
Other methods have been used in the meantime, for decades. But they are only so effective. Vitamins, other foods, and other methods have been in process. But they each have their own limitations, both on supply to remote areas and getting local peoples to take up those methods.
The latter is the biggest issue, especially with trying to introduce alternative foods like carrots. If they aren’t a part of the local cuisine, many of the individuals, who are often subsistence farmers who have limited land and only grow explicitly what they need to survive, aren’t interested.
Hence why golden rice was developed, because rice is a main part of the local diet in these areas and so it is much easier to get them to adopt growing a different cultivar of something they already eat than it is to convince them to grow a completely different food.
If it’s been studied and proven safe, there shouldn’t be any room for Greenpeace to make their claims. They’re not a science authority. So what has been done to study its safety and why is anyone even listening to Greenpeace?
As the article points out, it’s not just a question of safety.
“Farmers who brought this case with us – along with local scientists – currently grow different varieties of rice, including high-value seeds they have worked with for generations and have control over. They’re rightly concerned that if their organic or heirloom varieties get mixed up with patented, genetically engineered rice, that could sabotage their certifications, reducing their market appeal and ultimately threatening their livelihoods.”
Their argument continues past that, but yes the court has sided with greenpeace because the of the potential economic losses and the availability of alternative solutions including other crops rich in vitamin A and the effectiveness of food distribution to combat malnutrition.
The right way to do it would be to outcross Golden Rice with local strains to transfer the beta carotene gene while preserving other traits that are already adapted to the local ecosystem, thereby maintaining biodiversity and allowing the rice to continue to coevolve with other local organisms. But that would threaten
Monsanto’scorporate patents.that would threaten Monsanto’s patents
Its the other cancer peddling shitheel this time. Syngenta owns the patent, making it completely justified for Greenpeace to prevent them from gaining control of the food supply, even if they have to use BS arguments about food safety to do so.
Who’s talking about Monsanto?
Introgresion of the beta carotene-giving T-DNA locus into local varieties would take a decade before we can obtain a cultivar that resembles local varieties, and this is only if said local varieties are highly homozygous. If they are not, what you are suggesting is simply not possible with 2024 technology and I don’t see it becoming possible soon. Such a delay would mean large numbers of children dying and many more suffering. The Monsanto boogeyman’s profit desires are not relevant, unless you’d like to give them some credit for making the damn thing, and I’m not even sure they were involved? A company called Syngenta made Golden Rice 2, maybe you’re referring to that?
The right way to do it would be to outcross Golden Rice with local strains
That this might happen is literally one of the specific complaints of farmers.
It’s only a danger to the other farmers legally. They could be sued for using patented genes.
The article said they felt it could endanger their livelihood by crossing with cultivars they’d spent decades developing and which were uniquely valuable economically.
IP on crops is a legitimate problem. I didn’t see anything about terminator seeds, but honestly wouldn’t surprise me. Saving lives can all to be often at odds with making money. Plan probably is to take over the market and then ratchet up the price…
The right thing to do is to get a job at Monsanto, acquire a copy of the gene sequence, then smuggle it to some off the grid lab to do one’s own cross breeding.
Like Praxidike Meng did with that protomolecule yeast.
Don’t know much about current rice farming practises huh? That’s ok. You almost sounded knowledgeable to others that don’t.
The anti-science crowd ranks up another victory.
They have pretty successful killing nuclear power, secularism, vaccines, modern birth procedures, nitrogen fixation, and now GMOs. I guess AI is next.
I guess AI is next.
We can hope.
Lot of rage at something that is apparently a fad that will go away on its own and yet somehow will take all our jobs.
I can point to all the ways AI has made my life worse. Google (and YouTube) has gotten worse, any forum where art is posted (that includes lemmy) has gotten worse, and I’ve had to establish a safeword with my mom because of AI scammers.
So, sincerely, pull your head out of your ass. Thank you.
YouTube recommendations have sucked for years, your own fault for using Google, art hasn’t made sense since a can of soup counted as it, and your mom shouldn’t be answering calls. Period. What the fuck just text like a normal person.
So sincerely please stop being a luddit,
Oof, how much money did you lose on crypto buddy?
Burn
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I’m sorry, why are you using the Internet to answer me? That is double plus ungood and also unnatural
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Another personal attack.
The implication is: that by it’s nature -All Science Is Good® All science is cool. Is neat. But not all good. There a many genies, we suffer from that we can not put back in the bottle. Some of us ‘Science for a living’, and still don’t think ‘All Science Is Good’.
The implication was not that, but strawmen are easier so go ahead and attack them.
In my language this statement :
The anti-science crowd wins again
Says that science (good) is being defeated by the anti-science crowd (bad). From there it follows, if people are against this product of science, then they are against science.
Therefore, all science must be good. And all people against ANY product of science are therefore ‘anti-science’
Bifurcation. Basic logical fallacy.
Greenpeace have genetic purity fanatics?
Greenpeace have genetic purity fanatics?
Were you trying to be funny or do you really think this is the motivation here? Did you even read the article?
Greenpeace is full of complete nutheads.
full take: this is a complex topic involving sociology, agricultural science, economics, culture, ethics, and more and deserves serious discourse
meme take: THAT RICE IS PRETTY I WANT IT
Any plant or animal that has been domesticated has been genetically modified.
Their concern is not solely based on the gene modification. The impact of introducing a new crop is bigger than that. The golden rice is patented and that often comes with a ton of regulations the local farmers have no control over.
While I wish for there to be a good way to solve the food problem AND find a good use for gene modification, I don’t think that this particular instance is it…
This. Read an article a while back about American farmers getting sued because there was GM crop growing in their fields when they didn’t plant it. It had cross pollinated from neighboring farms. Being able to sue over patented GM crops is just a bad idea.
The GM crop was Roundup Ready. Unlike non-GM crops, it won’t be killed by a Roundup, an herbicide. So unless you are using GM seeds, it would be madness to spray Roundup on your crops.
All of those farmers were sued when they used Roundup on their fields. Why would they do so if they didn’t secretly plant Roundup Ready seeds?
Nah, they’re right. It will give American Biotech corps a strangle hold over seeds. The world grows more than enough food for everyone. Scarcity is not why people go hungry.
This isn’t about scarcity, it’s about addressing Vitamin A deficiency.
Yes Im sure it’s all about addressing dietary deficiencies and not profit motivated at all
Golden Rice was the first transgenic crop to be created that benefited people not companies or farmers, yet its use has been blocked from the start,” Potrykus told the Observer last week. “I am extremely worried about the decision of the Philippines court, not just for its impact on the take-up of Golden Rice but its effect on the growing of other transgenic crops.”
This view is shared by many scientists. In 2016, more than 150 Nobel laureates signed an open letter that attacked Greenpeace for campaigning against Golden Rice and other GM crops
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