Point by point, scientists have disproved these criticisms and are baffled at the resistance that remains. They bristle at the idea that a project developed largely with public funds and aiming to save 6,000 children per day is a ploy of conglomerate industrialists. (Companies like Syngenta that donate thousands of hours and dollars to humanitarian projects are irked to be called conglomerate industrialists in the first place.) Scientists acknowledge that Golden Rice doesn’t solve problems of economic disparity but contend that it was never intended to. It is true that transgenic plants can interbreed with wild plants, but International Rice Research Institute studies have determined the probability of Golden Rice doing so is extremely low. Golden Rice it is self-fertilizing, rice pollen grains are only viable for three to five minutes, and even if transgenic pollen made it to a wild rice plant, the genes it carried would not crowd out wild rice because its beefed-up beta-carotene genes confer no leg up when it comes to natural selection. The cooking and storage argument has been shown false, and while leafy vegetables do provide a source of vitamin A, they cannot be stored year-round like rice.

Environmentalists were right to argue that the initial Golden Rice did not have enough beta-carotene to satisfy daily vitamin A requirements. But the latest version of Golden Rice, which contains 23 times as much beta-carotene, has resolved this issue. Lastly, the conviction that supplemental programs like those in Ghana and Nepal work fine is simply not true. According to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the US food aid program in Ghana alone costs an average of US$20 million per year. Current food aid is distinctly in the position of giving the man the fish, while Golden Rice would be more like a gift of rod and tackle — more efficient and cost effective. Furthermore, on a broader level than the above specific concerns, opposition to Golden Rice is scientifically unwarranted. In 2000 more than 3,500 scientists, including five Nobel Prize winners, signed “a Declaration in Support of Agricultural Biotechnology,” a petition supporting Golden Rice. According to the BBC, no study has ever found GM food harmful to humans.

The Politics

Unfortunately, the debate is based less on this evidence than political motives. The real question is why NGOs like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth continue to oppose Golden Rice given the humanitarian need and exhaustive evidence suggesting its harmlessness. There are the usual suspects: knee-jerk opposition to biotech companies and ignorance of the science. But beyond these there is an important consideration. To the NGOs, Golden Rice may be a step down the slippery slope of GM introduction. Greenpeace’s website lambasts Golden Rice as a scheme to introduce GM foods in general — and what would be a better way? Golden Rice is an apparently harmless GM product with enormous humanitarian benefit and therefore a dangerous domino to anti-GM foods groups. If it were introduced, it would be a victory for GM foods and might push for their introduction in general.

This NGO opposition inflames European opposition and thus increases the price, difficulty, and time necessary to bring Golden Rice to farmers. Even though the European Union’s unofficial moratorium was overturned in 2003, the movement to label GM foods remains. Many have suggested that labeling would hurt GM producers because it would implicitly mark produce as inferior or dangerous. Golden Rice’s hurdles have not been swept away by the WTO ruling, and due to the moratorium in the past and the labeling threat going into the future, Golden Rice field trials have been delayed in India, Vietnam, the Philippines and Bangladesh. This delay has been considerable:. According to Potrykus, “If not a GMO, breeders would have developed varieties [of golden rice] by 2002, and farmers could have used them from 2003 on. Because of GMO regulations Golden Rice will not reach the farmer before 2009 — with at least six years of delay.” The human cost of this delay has also been considerable: “Every day 6,000 people die from VAD, probably more than 50 percent from rice-dependant VAD. Even with only 1 percent Golden Rice usage, 65,000 GMO regulation-caused deaths could be preventable in 6 years.”

Conclusion

EU opposition and NGO domino politics are the real reasons we have been waiting since 1982 for the eradication of blindness in the developing world. NGOs like Greenpeace will never reconsider. Publics, however, could be a different story. The most important group to sway is the European public. As the 2005 Eurobarometer poll showed, there is a long way to go in biotechnology public education. Awareness should be premised on three key facts: GM foods have never been shown harmful, Golden Rice is not intended for export to Europe, and the obstructionism of their governments is allowing the blindness and deaths of hundreds of thousands. Public awareness campaigns like those conducted by the Golden Rice Project, as well as the addition of the topic to the local Rotary Club meeting, could do much to promote grassroots knowledge. Additionally, the United States should try to get the European Union and developing countries talking specifically about Golden Rice, not the far more threatening specter of GM foods at large. If the United States made a credible commitment that any deal would be about the humanitarian issue of Golden Rice and not GM foods at large, and that Golden Rice is for subsistence farmers, not for export, the EU might prove much more amenable. The United States should also lean on Europe to assure developing countries that they will not be barred from EU markets because of Golden Rice production, as long as Golden Rice does not make its way into exports to Europe. Lastly, the United States should promote discussion on a scientific basis, because once the discussion is in the scientific court, Golden Rice is clearly an unparalleled opportunity to wipe out a preventable and deadly disease. If EU and US policymakers and citizens take these actions today, we might be able to see Golden Rice in the hands of third-world farmers before the currently projected date of 2009.