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Comment by Beijinger | Hacker News Reader

"Greenpeace Southeast Asia campaigner Wilhelmina Pelegrina said in a statement. Greenpeace joined MASIPAG, a farmers’ association, and other organizations and individuals in challenging the planting permit. “GM crops have never been proven safe,” Pelegrina asserted."

Well, you can't prove a negative.

I actually wonder how high the acceptance rate for this rice in Asia is. White rice is one of the foundations of their culture. And this rice is not white!

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Except you can make hypotheses about what you could expect to see as negative effects, feed a population of volunteers (or animals) the food, compare them to control population and see if the hypotheses can be accepted or rejected? Complaining about proving a negative or proving something is safe as a knee-jerk reaction is silly. Think about what happened with all the regulations around BPA in plastics food containers. The industry worked around it by substituting BPS and BPF. Demending those alternatives should have been proven safe first is entirely reasonable.

I will admit that Greenpeace will probably just shift goal posts continually with "it's not proven safe enough" while simultaneously never putting in writing what the bar for safety should be..

So you are actually in complete agreement that you can’t prove a negative and you also agree Greenpeace is not operating in good faith but rather is agenda driven.

I'd usually be in favour of the various antics of Greenpeace, but this ruling strikes me as odd. There's very little safety testing of traditionally produced crops and there's typically no problem with producing new varieties of existing produce. I could understand it more if it was a push-back against varieties that are engineered to not produce seed so that farmers are continually having to purchase from the company.

That's also (mostly) propaganda. Farmers are very busy without having to deal with the side business of inefficiently growing their seeds and would buy anyway.

If farmers would buy seed anyway, then why are companies putting effort into forcing them to do so?

It's more of a measure against competitor sellers than against farmers.

An important, but little known fact about modern agriculture, is that _everyone_ buys seeds from specialized seed companies.

Not everywhere, even in the USA. I know there are small family farms that got busted for growing gmo seeds so it is worthwhile for some. Maybe not the big players.

Except the only versions of golden rice that are engineered to prevent growing your own seed is... Mandated by Greenpeace, campaigned to make mandatory in various countries, in order to prevent "contamination"

> White rice is one of the foundations of their culture

Golden rice is targeted at the lesser-developed countries in Asia who are less likely to be snobbish about the color. Fried rice (where rice turns a yellow/red/brownish color) is also very common in the Philippines/China/SEA so aesthetically it just looks like fried rice to me. Would be much weirder if green or purple.

The cooked form resembles saffron rice, an expensive dish made of rice and saffron. Indian leaders have taken the lead on foods and vaccines and ensured popular adoption and continues today.

https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/66098

https://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/saffron-rice-or-kesar-rice...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-53944723

>> “GM crops have never been proven safe,” Pelegrina asserted.

> Well, you can't prove a negative.

If someone claims that GM crops have never been proven safe, they should be expected to provide evidence to support that claim. I don't think that the claim being negative should shift the burden of proof away from the claimant.

There doesn't seem to be any reviews that actually mention its taste whatsoever, other than it's supposed to taste like rice. Maybe it doesn't taste great, or it's anyhow not a significant value add for farmers.

Unclear to me: Is golden rice encumbered by any patents?

Yes, but fwiw:

> A recommendation was made that golden rice be distributed free to subsistence farmers. Free licenses for developing countries were granted quickly due to the positive publicity that golden rice received, particularly in Time magazine in July 2000. Monsanto Company was one of the companies to grant free licences for related patents owned by the company. The cutoff between humanitarian and commercial use was set at US$10,000. Therefore, as long as a farmer or subsequent user of golden rice genetics would not make more than $10,000 per year, no royalties would need to be paid. In addition, farmers would be permitted to keep and replant seed.

Also any patents expire in 20 years, and most are approaching their EOL.

The original 20-year-old version of golden rice was unfortunately basically unusable (not enough bioavailable vitamin A even when used as part of a much more balanced diet that was more favorable to vitamin A absorption than that of the people it's actually aimed at and substantial yield reductions). Fixing the yield reductions at least required more modern GM techniques that are likely going to be under patent for a good while.

> Therefore, as long as a farmer or subsequent user of golden rice genetics would not make more than $10,000 per year, no royalties would need to be paid. In addition, farmers would be permitted to keep and replant seed

From a farmer’s point of view, that’s a definite yes.

And still we have tests for medication, cars etc.

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