Genetically Engineered Vitamin A Rice: A Blind Approach to Blindness Prevention.

• Author: Vandana Shiva, Dr.

Genetically engineered Vitamin A rice has been proclaimed as a miracle cure for blindness--"a breakthrough in efforts to improve the health of billions of poor people, most of them in Asia."

A Zurich research team headed by Ingo Potrykens and Xudong Ye introduced three genes taken from a daffodil and a bacterium into a rice strain to produce a yellow rice with high levels of beta-carotene, which is converted to Vitamin A within the body.

The rice is being promoted as a cure for blindness since Vitamin A deficiency causes vision impairment and can lead to blindness. According to the UN, more than two million children are at risk due to Vitamin A deficiency.

Is the "golden" rice a miracle that is the only means for preventing blindness for Asia or will it introduce new ecological problems like the Green Revolution did and create new health hazards like other genetically engineered foods?

Genetically engineered rice as part of the second Green Revolution is repeating the mistakes of the Green Revolution while adding new hazards in terms of ecological and health risks. The genetic engineering of Vitamin A rice deepens the genetic reductionism of the Green Revolution. Instead of millions of farmers breeding and growing thousands of crop varieties to adapt to diverse ecosystems and food systems, the Green Revolution reduced agriculture to a few varieties of a few crops (mainly rice, wheat and maize) bred in one centralised research centre (IRRI for rice and CIMMYT for wheat and maize). The Green Revolution led to massive genetic erosion in farmers' fields and knowledge erosion among farming communities, besides leading to large scale environmental pollution due to use of toxic agrichemicals and wasteful use of water.

Eclipsing Alternatives

The first deficiency of genetic engineering rice to produce Vitamin A is the eclipsing of alternative sources of Vitamin A. Per Pinstrup Anderson, Head of the International Rice Research Institute, has said that Vitamin A rice is necessary for the poor in Asia, because "we cannot reach very many of the malnourished in the world with pills." However, there are many alternatives to pills for Vitamin A supply. Vitamin A is provided by liver, egg yolk, chicken, meat, milk, and butter. Beta-carotene, the Vitamin A precursor, is provided by dark green leafy vegetables, spinach, carrot, pumpkin, mango and drumstick [a South Asian vegetable].

Women farmers in Bengal use more than 100 plants for green leafy vegetables.

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