Come on Dale, get with it. These multi-national companies do not spend
millions of dollars engineering food out of the goodness of their hearts,
they do it for PROFIT - the bigger, the better. That profit cannot come
from the poor, malnourished people they want to "help". It will come from
the big governments providing aid (you know, the ones with deep pockets).
Remember the old saying: "Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a
man to fish and he eats for a lifetime." Teaching people to use what they
already have to improve their life seems so much more practical...but not
profitable. And that is why no big company is in there doing it.
-----Original Message-----
From: Wilson, Dale <WILSONDO@phibred.com>
To: 'sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu' <sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu>
Cc: 'Erney, Diana' <Diana.Erney@Rodale.com>; 'jimduke@cpcug.org'
<jimduke@cpcug.org>
Date: Monday, March 06, 2000 7:01 PM
Subject: RE: Golden rice
>Diana,
>
>You quoted Jim Duke:
>> In SE Asia, 70% of children under 5 are deficient in Vitamin A.
>> UNICEF predicts that improved vitamin A nutrition could prevent 1 to
>> 2 million deaths each year among 1-4 year olds alone. Worldwide, an
>> estimated 124 million children are vit-A-deficient. Low-tech
>> solution: Manually harvest the edible weeds and add it to unprocessed
>> rice. Starving carotenoid-deprived families can afford this logical
>> solution.
>
>We all know that we should eat our vegetables, but some people don't for a
>variety of reasons. Many rice-eaters are quite particular about their
rice,
>and simply won't add enough vegetables to their rice.
>
>> High-tech solution: Kill weeds with weedicides; genetically modify
>> rice so it is tolerant to the DuNovSanto weedicide; genetically
>> engineer rice to make its own carotenoid; buy your fertilizers,
>> pesticides and GMO seeds...
>
>Duke is pursuing a straw-man argument here. The proposal is to get
>vitamin-A containing rice varieties into the hands of poor people.
>
>> Curried rice is eaten by a lot of poor people, satisfying, perhaps
>> trivially, their carotenoid deficit.
>
>I don't think turmeric and cumin are significant sources of carotenoids.
>
>> I predict that GMO golden rice will be more expensive, more prone
>> to disease, and hence demand more pesticides and weedicides, than
>> good old fashioned lo-tech rice.
>
>Duke has no basis to make this prediction.
>
>> I would more conservatively recommend instead incorporation
>> of a few leafy weeds into an herbed rice.
>
>Again, people for various reasons do not eat enough vegetables. This
>recommendation is not new, and it has not worked.
>
>> Eat your Weedies....
>
>This is a glib response to 124 million vitamin A deficient children. It is
>not a bad recommendation, but I think it would be unethical to neglect a
>genetic solution to the problem. Don't you think that we should do both?
>
>Dale Wilson
>
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