Neil Young is following the lead of activists who claim that GMOs are harmful to health, farmers and the environment.
This is tragically wrong. In reality, GMOs can save millions of lives. It’s the environmentalists who are doing real harm.
The best example of this is Golden Rice, a miracle grain enhanced with Vitamin A-producing beta-carotene.
Developed 15 years ago, it was considered a breakthrough in bio-fortified technology. Today, 6,000 children will die from Vitamin A deficiency. Each year, 500,000 people, mostly children, lose their sight; half of them will die within a year of becoming blind. Altogether, over 2 million people every year are victims of Vitamin A deficiency.
Many of those lives could be saved if Golden Rice were in their diets.
But the ongoing opposition of anti-GMO activist groups and their lavish scare campaign with its combined global war chest estimated to exceed $500 million a year have kept Golden Rice off the global market.
Isn’t it time for them to show leadership on this urgent humanitarian issue, starting with Golden Rice?
Where also are the UN organizations WHO, FAO, UNICEF — all with nutritional improvement and development mandates?
They’ve recognized the scourge of Vitamin A deficiency as a major and cheap-to-control problem for the last 25 years.
But, cowed by activist polemic, these institutions have done little to advance the cause.
Instead of bashing companies that are trying to save lives, Young ought to use his star power to convince the NGO community to do the right thing and support giving the developing world the GMO tools it needs to feed its growing, and tragically malnourished, populations.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: How Neil Young, Greenpeace work to starve the world’s poor
