By Henrylito D. Tacio
“The impact of hidden hunger on people’s health is very rea. It can result in more frequent and severe illness and complications during pregnancy, childbirth, infancy, and childhood.” — International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)
***
There is a potential new “tool” again vitamin A deficiency (VAD), a form of hidden hunger. No, it is not in the form of a pill but still a food — through the staple food of Filipinos. Yes, you’re right, rice. But it’s not just another kind of rice; it is called golden rice.
An expert from the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) said Golden Rice is a potential new food-based approach to help fight vitamin A deficiency (VAD), a form of hidden hunger.
Dr. Violeta Villegas, a scientist from the Laguna-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) said hidden hunger is a pervasive and persistent problem affecting more than two billion people globally.
“As a breeder myself, it gives me pride and joy to be part of a humanitarian project that seeks to address a major public-health problem,” said Dr. Villegas, IRRI’s golden rice project coordinator.
The Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO) estimates some 190 million children and another 19 million pregnant women who are directly affected by VAD globally. VAD is more common in poorer countries but rarely seen in more developed countries.
“For children, lack of vitamin A causes severe visual impairment and blindness, and significantly increases the risk of severe illness, and even death, from such common childhood infections as diarrheal disease and measles,” the United Nations health agency said.
For pregnant women in high-risk areas, VAD occurs especially during the last trimester when demand by both the unborn child and the mother is highest. “Lactating mothers also need vitamin A because their milk is their babies’ primary source of nutrition,” Dr. Villegas said.
Vitamin A is found naturally in many foods, including liver of chicken, beef, pork, and fish. Most of them, however, can be found in root crops (carrot and sweet potato) vegetables (broccoli and tomato), and milk products (cheese and butter), and fruits (papaya, mango, melon).
“I always say yes, there are interventions like diversifying diet, breast-feeding, fortification, and so on,” Dr. Villegas said. “They’re working, but the fact remains that there’s still a sizable portion of our population not reached by these interventions.”
According to Dr. Villegas, there remain sectors of society that are not reached by the current interventions, those who live in far-flung barangays, but they eat rice three times a day, sometimes more, so fortifying rice can indeed help.
“It will be very good if there will be an additional tool in our kit, in our toolbox, to complement the existing interventions,” she pointed out.
That’s where golden rice comes in. It is a good example of how agriculture and nutrition can work together to fight VAD.
It is called so because it contains beta carotene, which is converted to vitamin A when eaten. Normally, rice plants produce beta-carotene in their green parts, but not the grain that people eat. Golden rice is genetically engineered to produce beta-carotene in the edible part of the plant.
Using genetic modification techniques, respected scientists developed golden rice using genes from corn and a common soil microorganism that together produce beta carotene in the rice grain.
According to IRRI, conventional breeding programs could not be used to develop golden rice because rice varieties do not contain significant amounts of beta carotene.
Credited for discovering the golden rice were Ingo Potrykus, who was 65 at that time and was about to retire as a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and Peter Beyer of the University of Freiburg. “My team targeted vitamin A deficiency because this is one of the largest health problems worldwide,” Prof. Potrykus was quoted as saying.
In 2005, scientists develop the current version of golden rice. In the Philippines, the first generation golden rice was first tested in advanced field trials in IRRI in 2008. The second generation of selected varieties was field tested in the wet season of 2010. At the state-owned Philippine Rice Research (PhilRice), confined field trials of advanced lines were conducted in February to June 2011.
“The field trials are an important step in evaluating the performance of golden rice and to determine if it can be planted, grown, and harvested just like other popular rice varieties,” PhilRice said in a statement. “These trials are also part of the safety assessment of golden rice.”
Asked when golden rice will be allowed for cultivation, Dr. Villegas said in a press statement: “Our answer is, when we get all the approvals, we will share them immediately. I cannot say the year because we are following the regulatory system of the Philippines that prescribes all the steps that we have to take.”
But despite the good things that golden rice brings, there are those who are against its commercialization. “The statement that golden rice would solve world hunger is ludicrous,” wrote Leonard Pollara of Organic Sage Consulting. “The proposal that any agricultural activity that relies upon a concentrated vertically-integrated food supply to end world hunger flies in the face of history and reality.”
One of the key arguments of the critics is that golden rice, once sold, will serve only the interest of multinational companies, an issue that is well-anchored on intellectual property rights.
Others claim that the golden rice was just a ploy of agrochemical companies. To quote the words of Father Shay Cullen in an article he wrote recently: “They own and supply the specific fertilizer that makes the seed grow and upon which it is dependent. In this way, the corporations control the food supply through their genetically-modified seed and food products.”
International group Greenpeace, which has made a concerted effort to block golden rice’s introduction since it was announced in 2000, claims that vitamin A-fortified rice may not be effective in delivering vitamin A to children.
“The real reason Greenpeace is opposed to golden rice is because it is genetically modified and it can’t seem to imagine that even one beneficial crop might result from this technique,” writes Dr. Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace who helped lead the organization for 15 years but is now an independent ecologist and environmentalist. “It is willing to put its zero-tolerance ideology ahead of a critical humanitarian mission.”
