‘Golden rice’ and its future

Soon after the ‘Starlink’ scandal, Swiss biotechnologists announced the development of ‘golden rice’, a variety of rice that has much higher levels of ?-carotene than normal rice. The human body can use ?-carotene to synthesize vitamin A. Vitamin A deficiency is widespread in the developing world and is the leading cause of non-infectious blindness. The most common reason for this deficiency is overreliance on rice, which is often the only food available to people living in dire poverty and to subsistence farmers in southeast Asia.

It is uncertain how effective golden rice will be in combating vitamin A deficiency, and it is not a permanent solution to global malnutrition, but it will probably lead to improvements in vitamin A nutrition of some of the world’s poor. The biotechnology industry has been quick to capitalize on golden rice, using it as an example of the potential of biotechnology to beneficially affect human society. This use of golden rice as a public relations tool has been widely criticized, especially by the developers of golden rice.

The pathway of development of golden rice has been very different from that of commercial transgenics. Funding for development came from the Swiss government and an American foundation (the Rockfeller Foundation). The developers of golden rice have always been adamant that golden rice seed would be freely available to farmers in the developing world and that they would not seek intellectual property rights for this transgenic plant. In contrast, companies such as Monsanto have successfully obtained patents for their transgenic crops, and patent rights are vigorously defended. A number of high-profile court cases in the US and Canada have demonstrated that the biotechnology industry considers intellectual property of transgenic crops to be essential.