Golden Rice Set To Be An Upmarket Health Food Not Food For The Poor.

[Guest guest]

GMW: GOLDEN RICE SET TO BE AN UPMARKET HEALTH FOOD NOT FOOD

FOR THE POOR

 

" GM WATCH " <info

Sat, 2 Oct 2004 17:15:12 +0100

 

 

GM WATCH daily

http://www.gmwatch.org

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GOLDEN RICE SET TO BE AN UPMARKET HEALTH FOOD NOT FOOD FOR THE POOR:

New developments in Syngenta and the Humanitarian Board

 

Dr Suman Sahai

 

Syngenta and the Humanitarian Board have recently moved to take steps

that will give it complete control over Golden Rice. Gone, apparently

are the pious intentions of delivering this rice to the world's poor.

It looks like there is a high-end nutraceutical in the making, a

golden health food for those who can afford these things.

 

The creators of golden rice are Ingo Potrykus of the Technical

University, Zurich and Peter Beyer of the University of Freiburg. The

Rockefeller Foundation financed a large part of the research effort

spanning ten years and costing many million dollars. As soon as it was

announced that a nutritionally enhanced 'Golden Rice' had been

created, containing pro Vitamin A that would help those suffering from

chronic vitamin A deficiency leading to night blindness, came the news

that this rice may never get a chance to reach the poor. The product

was found to be shackled in so many patents (over 70, big and small)

that if the license fees for the use of all the patents had to be

paid, the Golden Rice supposedly bred to ameliorate vitamin A

deficiency and prevent night blindness, would price itself out of the

market; certainly any markets that the poor could access. Further

developments in Golden Rice were watched closely. This was promoted as

a product developed with the purpose of targeting a widespread problem

of malnutrition. It became a test case to see how far the Life Science

corporations would go to defend their patents and block research aimed

at helping the poor.

 

The Agbiotechnology industry realized it had a full blown public

relations crisis, that a food allegedly developed to address the food

and nutritional needs of the poor may never reach them if some

solution was not found for the myriad patents holding Golden Rice

back. GM baiters set up a chorus of 'I told you so', that the life

science industry never intended to solve food and nutrition problems,

that the corporations owned everything through their patents and money

making was their primary, if not only goal. The 70 patents on Golden

Rice proved that point. The GM industry, reeling under bad press and

outright consumer rejection in many parts of the world, had to do some

quick thinking not to look like the monstrous exploiters they were

accused of being, holding back Golden Rice from those who would go

blind without it.

 

This product was after all their magnificent Trojan horse, breaching

the wall of resistance against GM foods. Here was a product developed

for the express goal of helping the poor and underprivileged and

saving children from blindness and a bleak future. This product could

not possibly be allowed to look bad. So Astra Zeneca stepped in in the

form of savior and made arrangements that Golden Rice could be further

developed.

Donations of " free licenses for humanitarian use " for intellectual

property rights involved in the basic technology were negotiated and

the inventors of Golden Rice reached an agreement with Astra Zeneca

and Greenovation, a Freiburg based biotechnology company.

 

Astra Zeneca was subsequently subsumed under Syngenta in the kind of

mergers that has typified the consolidation of the large life science

corporations. The Syngenta company now controlled access to Golden

Rice. To keep public criticism at bay, Syngenta set up a Humanitarian

Board and under it the " Humanitarian Golden Rice Project " to negotiate

access for developing countries. This enabled collaboration with

public rice research institutions in developing countries with the

" freedom-to-operate " so that they could develop locally adapted Golden

Rice varieties.

 

The Humanitarian Board had originally declared that countries would do

their own research using the genetic material of Golden Rice and that

the locally developed varieties would be made available to small

farmers free of charge. These varieties would become their property

and they could use and reuse seed for further plantings according to

prevailing custom. Big farmers on the other hand, would be able to

cultivate Golden Rice only after paying a license fee. The deal was

not unfair. Syngenta would make its money in western markets selling

Golden Rice as a health food and allow small farmers to benefit from

it in the developing countries. This model made the industry look

good, not like avaricious monsters and Syngenta did not really lose money.

 

Now suddenly comes the big turnaround. Syngenta appears to have

decided that since the furor over the 70 patents has died down and the

public opprobrium over the industry control over Golden Rice seemed to

have receded into the background, they could establish their claim

over the product again. In the meantime research on Golden Rice had

advanced and it was acquiring more the shape of a lucrative,

money-spinning product than the laboratory exercise it was a few years

ago.

 

To lay its claim to Golden Rice, Syngenta has quietly started a

process by which it has acquired complete control over the way in

which the genetic material of Golden Rice can be used by researchers,

ignoring the earlier conditions set up by the Humanitarian Board.

Syngenta can now allow or deny access to researchers at will. Rather

than the open research agreements that had been agreed upon earlier

with the South, the Humanitarian Board has laid down new conditions

under which Golden Rice will be available for breeding work to

researchers in developing countries. The old contracts between the

Board and the researchers have been revoked and new ones put in place.

All users including the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)

in the Philippines and all research partners in India, like theate of Rice Research (DRR), the Indian Agricultural Research

Institute (IARI), Tamil Nadu Agricultural University and Delhi

University have had to sign the new contract and agree

to abide by the new conditions.

 

Syngenta has laid down stringent conditions, which do not allow

researcher partners the freedom to operate, as was negotiated.

Research partners for example, have now lost the flexibility to design

their research according to the methods established in their

laboratories; they are allowed to do genetic transformation only by

using the Agrobacterium method. The new contract demands that only

those Golden Rice lines that have been transformed by Syngenta can be

used further by breeders/users.

The Humanitarian Board has demanded in addition, that all existing

transgenic lines developed individually by the different research

laboratories so far have to be destroyed. Regrettably, partner

institutions have complied with this!

 

Syngenta has also withdrawn all transformed rice lines from research

partners except one, a japonica variety called Oryza sativa var

krukoidee. This is the only line that will be made available to

developing country users for their Golden Rice breeding programs.

These new developments are designed to establish Syngenta's absolute

ownership of Golden Rice, a step likely to lead to patent claims.

 

The final element of corporate control over Golden Rice comes in the

person of Gerard Barry who has been appointed by Syngenta as the

Golden Rice Coordinator at IRRI. Mr. Barry's major responsibility at

IRRI is to work with plant breeders, biotechnologists, intellectual

property rights specialists, and biosafety and regulatory agencies in

Asian countries 'to facilitate the development and deployment' of the

genetically engineered Golden Rice originally developed by the

Technical University, Zurich. Prior to moving to IRRI, Barry had been of Research, Production and Technical Cooperation at Monsanto.

 

IRRI's involvement in the Golden Rice project and Barry's appointment

to oversee it have both been controversial. A former Monsanto

executive now has administrative control of the inter-governmental

Golden Rice research project. It is ironic that the CGIAR, which

claims to have more than 8,500 scientific staff on its rolls, could

find no scientist of distinction to coordinate the Golden Rice

program, if such coordination were indeed required and had to seek the

help of Monsanto, for managing the Golden Rice research project! To

add insult to injury, the well-heeled IRRI, has made an application

for the somewhat modest sum of $ 400,000 to conduct the nutritional

analysis of rice. The grant is being negotiated and administered by

Mr. Barry.

 

Mr. Barry's new assignment to manage Intellectual Property Rights on

Golden Rice would appear to have set the clock back more or less to

where it was when the charade over the Humanitarian Board and the

pro-poor nature of Golden Rice was played out. Mr. Barry's charge is

to push for the adoption of patented Golden Rice for those in

developing countries who can afford it. The poor blind children that

were held up as the reason why Golden Rice was being developed do not

seem to be part of the discourse anymore. The Life Science Industry

seems to have come full

circle.