Is Golden Rice the Solution to Vitamin A Deficiency in the developing world? The purpose of this article is to look at the argument of the introduction of GM crops, which are more resistant to disease and can be nutritionally enhanced to combat the diseas

A simplified overview of the carotenoid biosynthesis pathway in golden rice.

The development of Golden Rice Project is being moved forward at pace8. After the initial Golden Rice prototype  1999 and which accumulated around 1.6 µg/g of β-carotene in the grain, new lines have been constructed by tissue-specific promoters in the gene constructs9. This led to first Golden Rice 1 (GR1), which produced an average of 6 µg/g of β-carotene. The newest strain created by Syngenta scientists is GR2, produces 31 µg/g and more β-carotene10.

It is thought that widespread consumption of Golden Rice could reduce VAD by 59%, which could save almost 40,000 lives each year (Table 1)6. Because the severity of VAD is negatively correlated with income, the positive effects are most pronounced in the poorest income groups11.

Potential annual benefits of golden rice in the Philippines 23

Research has shown that annual health costs associated with VAD can be as much as 0.3% of a country GNP. These costs could be reduced through golden rice. They demonstrate that Golden rice will mitigate problems of blindness and premature deaths, with social benefits ranging between $16 and 88 million per year15.

Golden rice will have a positive effect on the economy. Due to the health benefits of the rice and its resistance to pests. More rice will be produced, resulting in more food available to farmers and their customers. More food produced means more money for the farmers and their families leading to greater prosperity and survival16. Golden rice will then result in an increase in job opportunities, and this will result in an increase the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), allowing the biotech companies to flourish and increase, and therefore, the country’s money supply will increase. This will lead to a better health care system and greater survival for suffers17.

        Like any grown crops, golden rice also has an impact on the environment. Golden rice is grown in fields, and this causes the negative effect of allowing the soil to absorb the genetic material in the rice. The genes absorbed might be detrimental to the soil. An even bigger problem is that the genes will stay in the soil up to two years until the chemicals and DNA are washed away18. The biggest aspect of this problem is the horizontal gene flow; once the soil absorbs the DNA, the DNA cannot be taken out again. This of course can cause contamination to all of the crops whether they are normal or genetically modified19. However there are ways to prevent such contamination these include further modification of the rice crop. These include inserting further genes that alter the way in which the crop breeds. One such example is to change the time of year at which the plant produced pollen (or lack of production). This means that any subsequent pollen produced will have no chance of cross pollinating with other species of rice. Or that the pollen produced is sterile19. This has its own problem in that the seeds produced will be unusable in the next year. This will mean that farmers will have to rely on the biotech companies each year to provide new seeds.  In fact the rice is a self-pollinating crop and the viability of its pollens is just five minutes. Therefore the distance to which winds can carry it is rather immaterial20.

The health risks associated with golden rice are not yet understood. Toxins and proteins produced may have unknown side effects if consumed for long periods of time. The GNA (Galanthus nivalis agglutinin) inserted into the rice genome to render it resistant to rice pests has been shown to affect different parts of the digestive tracts of rats21.  

In addition as the rice can be fortified with added vitamins and minerals, it is possible for people who eat a lot of rice to have an excess intake of vitamins and minerals. Excess Vitamin A from in the diet from eating too much rice as well as other foods and vitamin supplements, may suffer from hypervitaminosis (Vitamin A toxicity). This leads to dizziness, vomiting, nausea and bulging fontaelle, which is gaps between the bones of the cranial of infants and foetus.

However there is limited research on this at present and although some evidence exists that golden rice could be dangerous it is not conclusive. In fact there are many studies which state the health benefits of the rice. At present it is premature to associate any real risks with the rice until further research is carried out.

Solutions such as home gardening, increased food diversity, food fortification and medical vitamin A supplementation, are already proven solutions for vitamin A deficiency. These solutions have made significant progress in the last five years, since Golden Rice was presented the first time. In Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam, Nepal and the Philippines these solutions already helped to eliminate blindness induced by vitamin A deficiency in children.

Nationwide supplementation programmes to supplement children once or twice a year with high-doses of Vitamin A are a key factor in reducing vitamin A deficiency on an acute basis, but on the long term, well-designed home garden programmes, including education for a more diverse diet, are the most sustainable way to reduce vitamin A deficiency and other vitamin and mineral deficiencies on the household level.

The problem of Vitamin A deficiency as well as the surrounding problems of malnutrition will only be effectively and sustainably solved by a broad variety of measures, which have to be closely adapted to the different regional and local conditions.

Home gardening is one of the solutions, next to educational programs on food storage and food processing and supplements of vitamin A in capsules.

But home gardening is the most promising long-term approach to vitamin A deficiency. The aim is not to cure vitamin A deficiency specifically, but to provide food on a daily basis. The FAO in conjunction with Helen Keller International (HKI) and more than 40 local NGOs has been promoting home-based food production in Bangladesh specifically aimed at tackling vitamin A deficiency. This initiative covers more than 180 sub-districts and reaches more than 700,000 households16.

Researchers are working on the Golden Rice for over nine years already, the money spend over these years could have been invested in the solutions that are already there.

Conclusion

It has been estimated that Golden Rice could prevent some 9000 new cases of blindness and 950 deaths per year in the Philippines alone. Despite this the critics claim that Golden Rice is too expensive17, and is therefore a high tech solution to simple agricultural problem. GM rice has been labelled a “fool’s gold” especially when well established alternate treatment exists such as the right education for mothers to feed their children with green leafy vegetables and yellow fruits or a six month dosage of i.e. 20,00,000 IU (International Units) of Vitamin A  in a spoonful of groundnut oil will suffice. Either way Golden rice has a long way to go before it can be proclaimed as the cure to VAD. Golden rice alone will not eliminate VAD and related health costs18. Micronutrient deficiencies are caused by complex set of economic, social and cultural factors, and therefore Golden rice cannot be seen as a magic bullet. And instead it should be seen as a complementary tool in the fight against VAD.

 Evaluation of the reliability and validity of the sources used

The major issue concerned with GM crops are the risks that could be associated with ingestion of foreign genetic material. The following study; Effect of diets containing genetically modified potatoes expressing Galanthus nivalis lectin on rat small intestine19, claimed a measurable difference in the intestines of rats that ate GM potatoes compared to those that ate normal potatoes. Taking this at face value it this is strung evidence to suggest that GM foods have potential health effects on the individual consuming it. However looking closely at the experiment you see that the gene inserted into the potato was lectin. This substance is known to be toxic to mammals so it is inevitable that the ingestion of it would have such an effect20. The argument made is that the potatoes were ever intended for human consumption. But still it indicates the potential inflammatory nature of the research done. Researching the experimental evidence into GM foods I have yet to find any conclusive evidence that GM crops are a risk to humans, but there is strong evidence of possible allergic responses21.

Further to this the Nature study on the effects of Bt causing “high mortality rates in monarch butterfly caterpillars”. This is a surprising conclusion as this study showed that the pollen had to be ingested in order for the pollen to kill the caterpillar when they consume the milkweed plant. This experiment was also done in the lab and not in the field. When this experiment was repeated at the University of Guelph “under natural conditions”22, Bt corn has no effect on the monarch butterfly. Although laboratory experiments have their merits they can never be a true substitute for in the field research. Although I do trust the validity of the research done in the first experiment (as Nature is a top ranked journal), I would rather rely on data that comes from field research as this is a better reflection of what is actually happening.

To research how GM crops are created I used the information from the following website http://www.scq.ubc.ca/genetically-modified-foods/ . Also this seemed to a professional website, it is easy for anybody to create a website and often the information can be unreliable. To ensure that this information presented was correct I looked up the technique in: Biological science 1 organisms, energy and environment, in the book I found that the technique described in the webpage was accurate and correct.  

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