Genetically Engineered Pro-vitamin A ‘Golden Rice’ Reality vs. Fiction

gone too far. The industry's advertisements and the media in general seem to forget that it is a research product that needs considerable further development before it will be available to farmers and consumers." Gordon Conway, President of the Rockefeller Foundation (the major funder of the "Golden Rice " project). i "GM food scientists have already developed a yel-low rice, or "golden " rice, that is rich in vitamin A and iron and helps prevent anemia and blindness, especially in children." article published on CNN.com vii "This rice could save a million kids a year" headline on the cover of Time magazine viii According to its developers, 'Golden Rice ' will not be available for local planting until 2005 at the earli-est.ii Other scientists point out that proper research and testing would probably take much longer. There are no published studies about human health, socio-economic and environmental impacts. It is also uncertain whether the traits engineered in the 'Golden Rice ' would be 'stable', or whether they could be 'silenced ' by local environmental condi-tions. "It should be stressed that the time scale for com-mercialisation of transgenic cropsiii is as lengthy as any other variety; the tomato puree first sold in the UK in 1996 was developed from an academic proj-ect dating back to the early 1980s,&quot