GMO Banana Hubbub
A new potential GMO crop has become the target of anti-GMO protesting – a banana variety used as a staple crop in East Africa. The GMO banana is adapted to the Uganda highlands, and can represent up to 70% of the calories consumed by people in the region.
According to National Agricultural Research Organization (NARO) acting director Dr Andrew Kiggundu, 52% of children under five in Uganda suffer from Vitamin A deficiency, while iron deficiency accounts for 40% of deaths in this age group.
The GMO banana,which has been in development since 2005, has 6 times the beta carotene as the existing cultivar. Field trials are under way as they attempt to increase the iron content of the bananas and increase their resistance to nematodes which can wipe out up to 60% of the crop.
Predictably, anti-GMO activists are opposing testing of the new GMO cultivar. In an open letter they claim that GMO crops as a category have not been proven safe for human consumption, which is not true.
They further claim that programs to increase access to existing vegetables rich in vitamin A and supplement programs are sufficient to address this issue. This is also not correct, as such programs have been underway for years with limited benefit.
The letter calls into question the current feeding trials on healthy students at Iowa State University, conducted by Dr. Wendy White who is a world expert on Vitamin A absorption and metabolism. They raise trivial objections to the research, failing to recognize that these are preliminary studies in healthy individuals. They also fail to recognize the hypocrisy of simultaneously complaining that GMOs are not sufficiently studied and that they are being studied.
The usual complaints about GMOs are not relevant to the GMO vitamin A enriched banana. The new gene is taken from a wild banana species, and so is not a transgene from a distant species. The GMO is being developed by the Ugandan government, NARO, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). This is a humanitarian project. There is no issue of corporate ownership or patents. The new cultivar has nothing to do with pesticides or farming practice.
There is, in fact, no legitimate reason to protest this banana except that it is being developed using technology that falls within the broad and somewhat arbitrary definition of genetically modified. I doubt they would be protesting the feeding trials, or this approach to vitamin A deficiency, if the cultivar were developed through mutation farming.
In fact they give away their true motivation in the open letter, writing:
We will not stand by idly as attempts are made to systematically genetically modify Africa’s staple foods and in the process gain a massive positive public relations coup by claiming to have conquered health problems at the unnecessary risk to Africans.
They would rather that children in poor countries go blind and die due to vitamin A deficiency than have to deal with a “public relations coup” because a GM crop actually improved lives.
The hypocrisy is especially acute for the privileged and well-fed ISU students protesting these feeding trials.