Project 'GM Golden Rice' was embarked
on over 20 years ago to "reduce or eliminate much of the death
and disease caused by vitamin A deficiency (VAD), which has the
greatest impact on the poorest people in Africa and Southeast Asia".
Despite all these years of development,
Golden Rice has still not been tested to see if it can alleviate VAD.
Nowhere has it received the appropriate regulatory authorisation or
institutional review board clearances, nor authorisation for
unconfined environmental release. In short, GM vitamin A-enriched
rice hasn't reached the starting line.
Curiously, however, the International
Rice Research Institute (IRRI) now developing Golden Rice has asked
the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Food Safety Australia New
Zealand (FSANZ), and Health Canada for an opinion on the GM rice.
Since Golden Rice is clearly not
intended for cultivation or consumption in any of these areas, why
start by seek
confirmation of its acceptability there?
The short and scary answer to this is in a brief letter from the FDA indicating that the Agency accepts the IRRI's safety and nutritional assessment and has no further questions. It further explains that the Institute has "informed the FDA that although GR2E (the only promising version of Golden rice to emerge from the project) is not currently intended for cultivation or marketing in the United States, it anticipates that GR2E rice, or human and animal food products derived from GR2E rice may enter the US food supply via imports from countries of production". In other words, global contamination of the rice supply is assumed to be inevitable, so the IRRI is covering its back by making sure the major developed areas of the world have agreed to getting contaminated before taking the Golden Rice project any further.
The other even
shorter answer to the curious opinion is: PR.
The
FDA opinion enables the IRRI to announce it has received a "positive
food safety evaluation" from the US. Since regulators in areas
suffering VAD may not appreciate the short-comings (meaningless
nature) of the US-style
voluntary GM authorisation process (see Comment above),
this claim can be used as a resounding endorsement.
Another
point revealed in the FDA letter is that the Administration, in fact,
has no interest in the safety of Golden Rice on technical grounds
because the vitamin A content is too low
for any claim of added nutrient value. If this seems contradictory
to the raison d'être
of Golden Rice in the first place, it's because the average American
doesn't eat much rice. In areas of VAD, rice is the staple diet and
the average person eats six times the rice consumed in the US. The
'positive food safety evaluation' seems to be based more on a
perceived lack of relevance to the people the FDA is supposed to be
protecting rather than on any science proving it safe.
OUR COMMENT
Take any claimed GM
food safety endorsements from US regulators with a big pinch of salt:
they have no substance.
Check out NOVEL
GOLDEN SUBSTANCES - October 2018
SOURCES:
- Letter to IRRI from the US FDA, re: Biotechnology Notification File No. BNF 000158, 24.05.18
- Belinda Martineau, Golden Rice Showcases Both the Potential Benefits and Potential Risks of Crop Genetic Engineering, https://biotechsalon.com, 1.07.18
- Allison Wilson and Jonathan Latham, GMO Golden Rice Offers No Nutritional Benefits Says FDA, Independent Science News, 3.06.18
- Liberty Link Rice: the scandal that woke up the world, Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific, July 2011
CC photo By International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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