Greenpeace offers ‘safe alternative’ to IRRI’s GMO rice program

MANILA - Greenpeace on Friday called on the International Rice Research Institute to abandon its genetic engineering program as the environmental activist group offers marker assisted breeding as a safe alternative to bioengineering.

In its report “Smart Breeding: Marker Assisted Breeding, a non-invasive biotechnology alternative to genetic engineering of plant varieties,” Greenpeace said the marker assisted selection (MAS) of plant varieties renders genetic engineering “obsolete and completely unnecessary.”

“Genetic-engineering (GE) has been widely publicized in recent years by agro-chemical companies as the ‘future’ of agriculture. But MAS has already gone through many silent successes that have in fact overtaken the promises of GE,” said Daniel Ocampo, Greenpeace Southeast Asia Sustainable Agriculture campaigner.

The report focuses on the technical possibilities of MAS and its strengths compared to genetic engineering.

“GE, with its unsuccessful tests, contamination scandals, patent claims and risks to environment, health and food security, should be written off as what it is—a failed experiment,” said Ocampo.

Dr. Arnaud Apoteker, Greenpeace International Sustainable Agriculture campaigner, said MAS has no long-term harmful impacts on the environment and people’s health.

“MAS offers several advantages over GE: MAS respects species barriers, and raises less safety concerns, particularly about irreversible environmental harm and long-term negative health effects intrinsically associated with GE,” said Apoteker.

Despite the hype about the wonders of genetically-modified (GMO) rice, only three GMO rice varieties have obtained regulatory approval for mass production in the US, said Greenpeace.

“At the same time, while two GMO rice strains (Bayer LL601 and LL62) have received commercial approval in some countries, the said GMO varieties are not produced commercially, but approved merely as a consequence of GMO contamination,” it said.

In contrast, Greenpeace said the first MAS-developed rice cultivars are already being commercially grown by farmers in the developing world.

“More recent varieties that have been developed, or are currently being developed, take much less time and cost much less compared to GMOs. In short, MAS can do what genetic engineering can—but faster, cheaper and without threatening to cause irreversible harm to environment or to human health,” it said.

The launch of the Greenpeace MAS report comes ahead of the inauguration of the 50th anniversary of IRRI and its 6th Rice Genetics Symposium in Manila. IRRI’s programs include GMO research.

“With this report, Greenpeace is calling on the IRRI to abandon the development of GMO rice strains and focus on safe alternatives such as MAS. Governments should also stop funding GMO research,” said Ocampo.

“The way humanity has nearly tripled agricultural outputs over the past 50 years has come at unbearable costs for the environment, public health and social welfare,” he said.

Ocampo said the industrial farming system being promoted by IRRI causes ecological havoc and is not sustainable.

“Industrial farming, with its dependency on fossil fuels, toxic inputs and ignorance for common good, has proven to be a destructive, dead-end road. Fundamental changes are needed in to make our farming and food systems ecological. GMOs do not figure in this equation,” he said.

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