Date: 15/10/2014
Event: Greenpeace's Doug Parr on stem cells, Golden Rice and Pascal Husting
Credit: BBC Radio 4: Today Programme
People:
Professor Pete Coffey: Professor of Cellular Therapies, UCL
Dr. Patrick Moore: Canadian ecologist and campaigner
Dr. Doug Parr: Chief Scientist and Policy Director, Greenpeace UK
...Justin Webb: Presenter, BBC Radio 4 Today Programme
Justin Webb: Let's turn to Golden Rice.
Doug Parr: Yes.
Justin Webb: And its supporters, including Owen Paterson, who's been very passionate about this, on this programme and may well be, tomorrow - he says you're damaging poor people by your opposition to this particular GM food, because they will immediately benefit and there are no known disbenefits.
Doug Parr: Well, I don't necessarily agree with that. I think that the thing about Golden Rice is it's a least favourable option. And let's also be clear, that it doesn't actually exist yet. It's been many years in being proposed, and it doesn't actually exist.
Justin Webb: It doesn't exist because people like you stop it.
Doug Parr: No, that's such a cheap go, and it's not because of that - it's because they keep having to withdraw the lines of, varieties of research that they're trying to try something else, because it doesn't work very well.
Justin Webb: Would you welcome it - if it did exist, if it could be tried in a greater trial than has currently been done, would you welcome that?
Doug Parr: Just as I was saying, it's not - it's a least good option, amongst the options that are available for dealing with the problem. Firstly, let's establish that vitamin A deficiency is an issue - it's an issue alongside a whole load of other micronutrient deficiencies. And Golden Rice will at best - if it ever works - only tackle one of them, because the real solution to this is through a proper balanced diet, which projects like the home gardening initiatives in Bangladesh have developed, so that people don't just get one single nutrient improvement but they get nutrient improvement across the board.
Now, okay, I accept that under certain circumstances, that's not going to be possible to deliver, ultimately, very quickly, and therefore, biofortification is indeed appropriate. We support the use of other biotechnologies like marker-assisted breeding, which is already established and is now on the ground, delivering in crops like maize and cassava biofortified material that is helping to deal with micronutrient deficiency. And it does preserve the genetic context in which - in which breeding takes place, and so doesn't have the risks associated with GM, which international fora like the Biosafety Protocol have recognised.
Justin Webb: Well, you talk about risk, but there are risks that at the moment, in the case of Golden Rice - nobody is suggesting, I think, convincingly, that there's going to be any harm and there would be any harm if it were introduced - there would obviously be good immediately to those people who had it, who were able to eat it, and the harm is something that you think might be there but you have no evidence.
Doug Parr: But it doesn't actually work, I mean, you know, we're still talking about a theoretical proposition. And, you know, the organisations who are -
Justin Webb: In that case, would you like to see it tried, at least?
Doug Parr: We'd - we don't necessarily say that it's - that it's going to be disastrous, as I say it's the least best option for the variety of reasons that I'm trying to lay out, which is not a solution to the overall picture - there are other things that are working, they're on the ground now, there are technologies, including biotechnologies, that are doing a better job...
@ 20141015_R4 - mytranscriptbox: via Patrick Moore on Twitter
The Pundits Thoughts: The section in red it a denial of the fact that vitamin A supplementation can decrease death rates by about 20 percent in regions with this micro-nutrient deficiency. It is in fact completely wrong.
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