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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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Why would anybody, especially a global campaigning network, get their noses up in shit they don’t have a fucking clue about, and then double down after people who understand that shit go against them. What the fuck, Greenpeace?
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.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?
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.
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.
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.
This.
Don’t know much about current rice farming practises huh? That’s ok. You almost sounded knowledgeable to others that don’t.
The argument against Golden Rice should have nothing to do with GMO and everything to do with monocultures.
Greenpeace is fucked in the head.
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
Bro imagine having the balls to be so ignorant yet so brave
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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.
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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.
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?
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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.
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 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
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.
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.
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.
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
This contribution was based on the understanding that Syngenta would retain commercial exclusivity for the technology, including large agricultural setups in developing countries.
Lots of claims about it being for humanitarian purposes but there it is.
Did you read your link?
Eliminating reach-through rights and technologies that don’t show up in the most recently developed Golden Rice versions leaves us with only a few patented technologies, all of which have been made available for humanitarian purposes free of charge. The licensing process was quick and simple, contrary to what many onlookers believe. Similar projects are looking at this licensing agreement as a good example of how this kind of arrangements between the public and the private sector can be made, especially for humanitarian purposes.
I did. Did you see the part about it being free only for farms which earn under $10,000 annually?
Do you have any idea of the history of litigation around cross pollination from GMO crops?
What happens when a small farmer cross pollinates a larger farm? Do they get sued the same way Monsanto sued farmers for the cross pollination of GMO corn?
There are many unanswered issues that could arise from allowing golden rice and trusting Western philanthropy, which has been weaponised against developing nations in the past, is a surefire path to costly sabotage.
Do you want me to agree with you that big ag is shit? Well, I do.
Do I know about cross pollination? Yep, been keeping bees for a long time, though rice is wind pollinated and you aren’t controlling that anymore than my bees flight.
Have you lived in Asia? Most of what is called farms in the west are not for profit, they are a family with a few hectares of land, maybe a water buffalo. Water Buffalo are getting scarce though, what’s more common is having someone come in with a rice harvester to gather your crop, which is its own problem.
So $10k means nothing if you aren’t selling, or you sell $200.
Golden Rice was developed to address Vitamin A defiency, studies show it helps. It would be great if the whole thing was permissive license, it’s not though. This is what we have. So far it has only been grown in trials with local development agencies, Big Ag won’t touch it because of potential liability.
ETA: you want a hill to die on, go for anything Roundup Ready™ or GMO corn, not because it’s GMO, but because of the bullshit IP and the fact it is used overwhelmingly for ethanol production, not food, and has huge subsidies.
Yeah. I used to think people who were against GMOs were just anti-science contrarian types, but the more I saw of how Monsanto operates, the more I became cognizant of how it’s mostly just capitalism trying to stick its grubby hands in to literally everything to extract maximum profits.
I’m gettingn that thing where I keep losimg my spot no matter how many times I try to read over and bouncing paragraphs unintentionally. Does it say who owns Golden Rice? I assume it’s a branded product someone owns from the capitalization of its name.
I don’t think any one company owns the whole thing. But from what I’ve been reading, companies have granted humanitarian licenses for production under $10k US. That probably covers most places where it’s needed.
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 huge difference is who holds the patent. The example you gave involves Monsanto, the patent holder for several GMO crops, and a terrible company that does everything in its power to make money by exploiting people. Golden Rice, however, is patented by the scientists who designed it, who likely only patented it so that a company like Monsanto couldn’t just make some similar GMO and patent it instead, using it to exploit people even more.
This same thing happened back when genes themselves were able to be patented; some companies like Myriad Genetics would patent genes like the BRCA gene, a common source of inherited breast cancer predisposition, so that they could charge an arm and a leg for testing. So, researchers and non-profits would patent genes that they found just ensure they could be fairly studied and tested for.
The huge difference is who holds the patent.
I don’t think that is important really. The big problem is that patents can be sold so the good guy(s) with the patent could turn out to be not as good as we hoped when someone offers them a bucket load of money.
Well, yes, but that’s kinda my point. If you don’t patent, you get exploited, like how the discoverers of insulin synthesis decided not to patent, so companies patented similar, but not exact methods, and now it’s incredibly expensive. But, as you said, if you do patent, there is still a risk of exploitation if the patent holder sells to an exploitative company. However, that exploitation is still less likely than when not patenting, so I support the practice so long as patenting is still possible.
I worked at a small nonprofit back when genes were still able to be patented; we mostly studied the condition Pseudoxanthoma Elasticum, and held the patents to a few of the genes associated with it. However, we still allowed people to research them freely - we only patented them to prevent a company like Myriad Genetics, who had been patenting genes so that they could sell expensive genetic tests, from patenting it instead. We celebrated when genes were no longer able to be patented; I imagine that the researchers working with golden rice will do the same if we’re ever lucky enough for GMO’s to no longer be able to be patented.
Relying on a hope that someone will do good is, and always has been, a terrible idea. We need to fix that shit at its core.
I wholeheartedly agree. I was working for a small genetics nonprofit when they removed the ability to patent genes, and the whole office had a party to celebrate. It was mostly a celebration about freedom to research and test, but we were also very excited to no longer have to deal with having a bunch of patents. Even though we let people research the genes freely, we still had a bunch of paperwork that needed to be done any time someone wanted to do so.
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 read into it, the guy had planned all-GM and had kicked up a shitstorm with the “cross-pollination” theory to try and get away with it. Unfortunately reality matters in court so he hit sued (Greenpeace never told you that part)
The question here is whether to give farmers the freedom to choose to grow it - most will continue growing other varieties. Idk what uncontrollable regulations you are referring to, but no regulation will force you to grow something.
I also want to solve the problem and this is a great solution. It’s worth enacting it, unless you have a better idea - children have been dying, die right now, and could continue to die if something isn’t done.
not modified; selected
Is that selection not modification?
Selection technically isn’t modification, since the modification had to have already occurred for it to be selected for. However, modification certainly did occur, and all crops are genetically modified. Indeed, all living creatures are genetically modified, as without modification, evolution can’t occur.
The public fear of GMO’s is largely due to Monsanto, who aggressively protect their GMO crop patents to the point where farmers who just happened to have some seeds blow into their fields have been sued.
The issue with GMO’s isn’t the modification, it’s the lax patent laws that allow companies like Monsanto to exploit people for profit, giving a bad name to the field as a whole, in spite of the immense potential good it can do, for which Golden Rice is a prime example.
Any plant or animal that has been domesticated has been genetically modified.
You aren’t exactly the first person to misunderstand this. But congrats I guess.
It all depends what your definition of genetic modification is.
My opinion isn’t exactly a fringe theory.
It all depends what your definition of genetic modification is.
No it doesn’t.
It’s a completely disingenuous argument and a false equivalency. We know that we are referring to GMO vs selective breeding. These are completely different mechanisms and in the latter case we understand the consequences and implications because humans have been doing it for millennia. In the former case we have not been doing it very long at all and do not yet fully understand the consequences and implications. I’m not saying that makes it inherently wrong, but it is a vast area of unknown ramifications. And given human’s already long history of fucking with nature and finding out my money is on those ramifications being less than ideal.
It is selecting genes through breeding or doing the same thing in a laboratory.
It is selecting genes through breeding or doing the same thing in a laboratory.
It is a completely different mechanism. The best way to simply describe this is perhaps to say that in selective breeding you are allowing random mutations to happen naturally - IOW allowing the plant to naturally “adapt” to it’s environment. This is crucially different in that you are not going in and saying “oh these genes are the ones we want let’s only bring those out” but rather “these are the characteristics I want, let’s select the organisms that display those”.
To put it another way: in selective breeding you are selecting for a collection of characteristics. A great example is saving seed from a crop you have grown. Those seeds will always do better in your specific environment than commercially purchased seeds of the exact same cultivar. Why? Because there are small random mutations across a number of genes that are better adapted to your specific environment to produce the characteristics you want. Those genes are often not actually understood nor is the effect of different combinations of genes. By working backward from exhibited characteristics you are working from known successful combinations.
It’s like you’re trying to explain to me muscle mass growth from going to the gym vs hard work as a farmer.
It’s the same outcome and you’re not getting that.
It’s the same outcome and you’re not getting that.
I just explained how it’s not and you’re not getting that.
Here, educate yourself: http://www.differencebetween.net/science/difference-between-gmo-and-selective-breeding/
Being against GMOs is like wanting to ban electric cars because Elon Musk is a dickhead.
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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.
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.
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.
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
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