Is GM rice acceptable when it is modified to resist flooding?

Question

Rice is the primary food for 3 billion humans around the world. So what if genetic engineering could secure their rice supply?

Many Asian countries such as India often face flooding episodes that can destroy rice cultures.

A GM rice derived from Indian variety of rice is being developed to resist immersion in water. This rice could be grown in India and secure the food supply.

In your opinion, is it acceptable?

Some precisions to address some of the remarks made:

- this rice is the result of the introduction of a gene identified to provide resistance to water submersion into the genome of a rice especially suited for growing conditions in India (including resistance to local pathogens). So it is a really genetically engineered strain.

- it has not been developed by a commercial company but by researchers at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, together with the University of Cal. in Davis.

- Development of similarly engineered strains adapted for culture in Laos, Bangladesh and other regions of India is under way, so it will not be a single strain scheme.

- the source is: http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=7833

Answer 1

What are the wider effects? How do local wildlife populations respond to the crops? Does cross pollination occur? To what extent does the rice contribute to pollution? What are the long term health effects on people? Who is the pimary economic benefactor?

Answer 2

GM is usually a comercial decision to lock growers into buying a particular primium price product & associated growing system, pesticides, herbicides etc.

Feeding the growing population is often a case of affordability not availability.
The US dumping of subsidised rice on poorer countrries means that it is not worth suitable land in those areas being farmed.

Growing rice as part of an integrated culture, as traditionally practiced in China will result in higher food yield than speciallised mono-crop eg fish, prawns in paddy & salads & herbs on the margins, both of which are killed of by industrial agriculture. Also traditional landscapes are not as prone to flooding because of hedges, small ponds, trees and stable top-soil.

GM crops are very suseptable to disease vectors, so decreasing food security. ie the population will expand to take account of any increased food supply, but a disease vector can rapidly take hold and wipe out all of a mono-crop causing increased starvation eg the Irish potatoe famine

Answer 3

Unless you've got some kind of wacky weed-induced mother earth worship thing going on, GM rice is fine. GM rice that provides betacarotene to combat vitamin A deficiency is also fine. Banning DDT to allow millions of people to die of malaria each year is definitely not fine. People need to get their priorities right.

Who is responsible for the most death and misery?
Atilla the Hun?
Stalin?
Hitler?
Mao Tse Tung?
Rachel Carson?

The answer is obviously Rachel Carson as her book "A silent spring" lead to the banning of DDT, which in turn has lead to the death and suffering of millions of people worldwide due to malaria. She was also responsible for the birth of environmentalism ... go figure.

Answer 4

Yes. It's like asking if it is okay for a winery to cross different species of grape to make different wines. It's like asking if it is ok for a horse and a donkey to breed? This GM rice is not "new" rice. This is just crossing different varieties of rice.

Answer 5

I have never heard of the GM rice

Answer 6

i don't know if that's the way the world is intended to be..