Golden Rice in European and Global Conflicts over Biotechnology

The debate over Golden Rice offers an important window into understanding the larger politics of genetic engineering in agriculture. Both the technology enabling Golden Rice and the best organized political opponents originated in Europe. Designed to alleviate vitamin-A deficiency in susceptible populations, mostly poor people in rice-consuming countries, Golden Rice as political object controls for confounding variables that are important in the larger debate: it is not American, nor corporate, nor are there any property claims that could hinder access for poor farmers. Control of the technology is through an international humanitarian board. Nevertheless, major multinational organizations like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are opposed in such a fundamental way to genetic engineering in agriculture – though not in pharmaceuticals or ‘red’ biotechnologies – that dialogue with promoters of the technology often seems impossible. This paper summarizes the history of this debate, and provides potential solutions with a professional ‘systems approach’ premised on respect for science, but also respect different kinds of knowledge systems. In this way, we come to understand not only root causes of global and European disputes over biotechnology, but ways forward from the impasse.