251
‘A catastrophe’: Greenpeace blocks planting of ‘lifesaving’ Golden Rice
(www.theguardian.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 26 May 2024
251 points (91.7% liked)
News
22831 readers
4132 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I'd like to point out that Greenpeace or the local population doesn't have to prove that GM rice is bad. It's the other way around:
Big corps have to prove that GM rice is good and has no adversarial long-term effects, which is impossible to prove.
Which big corps would that be exactly?
It's perfectly possible to show that it's safe to any reasonable standard: https://www.irri.org/golden-rice-faqs
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jafc.9b01524
How exactly do you propose that the genetic makeup of the rice is going to impact the person eating it, if chemical analysis shows it's not meaningfully different from any other rice?
You can't demand that people prove something beyond unreasonable doubt. At some point you have to be able to articulate a concern to justify further scrutiny.
That would be Syngenta, the big agricultural corp involved in the project.
The key part to me is the under $10,000 USD per year from farming requirement. What happens when a larger farm gets accidental cross pollination?
What happens to farms with organic certification if their neighbours start growing golden rice and it cross pollinates?
There is a history of Western nations using “humanitarian” outreach to sabotage developing nations.
Assuming that Syngenta are entirely altruistic is a huge risk for developing nations.
Source: http://www.goldenrice.org/Content2-How/how9_IP.php
This is a good point, we shouldnt use this well tested and seemingly safe life saving scientific advance to save the lives and health of children because someone might have ulterior motives. Outright ban instead of a legal framework to protect against the abuse.
What big corps? Golden rice is developed by scientists working for universities and distributing it via NGOs for free.
And they've produced dozens of studies over the past 24 years showcasing its effectiveness and safety.
Syngenta.
http://www.goldenrice.org/Content2-How/how9_IP.php
Honestly, that's where my comment started... But everything I found showed that studies had proven that it was safe. So I changed tack and started focusing on the Greenpeace side.
Do you say this for every new organism that is patented or is it reserved solely for gmos?