Pick up that gauntlet

Golden rice makes GreenPeace co-founder Patrick Moore see red. Not because the rice gets him stirred up, but because the people who should be backing the rice don’t.
It’s been seven years since a Swiss team demonstrated that golden rice could help end childhood blindness.
“It’s been seven years, and a half million children are going blind every year,” Moore said.
“Yet GreenPeace puts unknown future consequences for human health and the environment ahead of a half million children going blind today.
“It’s not right that the real big cash crops are the ones that had the money put behind them to overcome the barriers that GreenPeace has put up.”
While there have been victories with corn, soybeans and cotton, Moore said, golden rice and other traits that could deliver humanitarian benefits to the world are allowed to languish in the research plots.
“Surely this industry can get up the organization and the resources to put some wind behind the golden rice project,” Moore said. “Surely, from a moral perspective, this industry could gain a little more sympathy from the public and the politicians if this was taken on.
“I challenge the industry to take some of the profits from soybean, cotton and corn, and channel it into a project that will actually succeed in breaking down the barriers that are stopping these nutritionally enhanced crops from being introduced on a wide scale.”