Golden rice can end world hunger
Genetically modified rice has been controversial, but with 250 million children suffering from vitamin A deficiency can we afford to ignore it?
Rice is a food staple for two billion people worldwide, but it does not contain provitamin A. That is one of the reasons why 250 million children worldwide have a deficit in this vital vitamin.
Vitamin A is not only important for vision, but also for resistance to infectious diseases.
Yet each year, up to 500,000 of these poor kids go blind and even more die of infections because they do not get enough of the vitamin in their diet. This is "hidden hunger" - enough calories, but not enough vitamins.
What are we doing to combat these disastrous numbers? The golden rice variety of this food is a good start: fortified with the yellow provitamin A it is indeed a golden opportunity.
So where did it come from? It was pioneered by Peter Beyer of the University of Freiburg and Ingo Potrykus, professor emeritus in plant sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. But the creation has not been without controversy and a longstanding row over the modified rice was reignited this month after Greenpeace alerted Chinese health authorities to an experimental trial giving the modified rice to children at a Hunan primary school.
A Chinese government researcher involved in the experiment has been suspended, while the American research chief was criticised for failing to get consent from parents.