1

Allow Golden Rice Now!

Presenter

Presentation Notes

I was born and raised in the tiny fishing and logging village of Winter Harbour on the northwest tip of Vancouver Island, in the rainforest by the Pacific.

Presenter

Presentation Notes

I eventually attended the University of BC studying the life sciences: biology, forestry, genetics; but it was when I discovered ecology that I realized that through science I could gain an insight into the mystery of the rainforest I had known as a child. I became a born-again ecologist,

Presenter

Presentation Notes

and in the late 1960’s, was soon transformed into a radical environmental activist. I found myself in a church basement in Vancouver with a like-minded group of people, planning a protest campaign against US hydrogen bomb testing in Alaska.

Presenter

Presentation Notes

We proved that a somewhat rag-tag looking group of activists could sail a leaky old halibut boat across the north Pacific ocean and change the course of history. By creating a focal point for opposition to the tests we got on national TV news in Canada and the US, building a ground swell of opposition to nuclear testing in both countries. When that bomb went off in November 1971 it was the last hydrogen bomb ever detonated on planet Earth. Even though there were four more tests planned in the series, President Nixon canceled them due to the public opposition. This was the birth of Greenpeace.

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Flushed with victory and knowing we could bring about change by getting up and doing something, we were welcomed into the longhouse of the Kwakiutl Nation at Alert Bay near the north end of Vancouver Island where we were made brothers of the tribe because they believed in what we were doing.

Presenter

Presentation Notes

people of all races, colors and creeds will join together to form the Warriors of the Rainbow to save the Earth from environmental destruction.

Presenter

Presentation Notes

We named our ship the Rainbow Warrior and I spent fifteen years on the front lines of the eco-movement as we evolved from that church basement into the world’s largest environmental activist organization.

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Next we took on French atmospheric nuclear testing in the South Pacific. They proved a bit more difficult than the US hydrogen bombs. It took years to eventually drive the nuclear tests underground. In 1985 French commandos bombed and sank the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbor, killing our photographer. But the protests continued, and today there are no nuclear tests in the South Pacific.

Presenter

Presentation Notes

This is me driving an inflatable boat into the first encounter with the Soviet factory whaling fleet in the North Pacific in 1975.

Presenter

Presentation Notes

We confronted the whalers,

Presenter

Presentation Notes

putting ourselves in front of the harpoons in little rubber boats

Presenter

Presentation Notes

to protect the fleeing whales and made it on national news around the world, bring the Save the Whales movement into everyone's living rooms..

Presenter

Presentation Notes

30 seconds later I was hauled off to jail

Presenter

Presentation Notes

and the seal was clubbed and skinned.

Presenter

Presentation Notes

But the next day this picture appeared in over 3000 newspapers around the world. This and many other direct actions eventually brought an end to the annual slaughter of hundreds of thousands of seal pups annually off the coast of Canada. By the mid-1980’s Greenpeace had grown from that church basement to an organization with an income of over US$100 million per year, offices in 21 countries and over 100 campaigns around the world, now tackling toxic waste, acid rain, uranium mining and drift net fishing as well as the original issues. We had won over a majority of the public in the industrialized democracies. Presidents and prime ministers were talking about the environment on a daily basis. For me it was time to make a change. I had been against at least three or four things every day of my life for 15 years; I decided I’d like to be in favor of something for a change. I made the transition from the politics of confrontation to the politics of building consensus. After all, when a majority of people decide they agree with you it is probably time to stop hitting them over the head with a stick and sit down and talk to them about finding solutions to our environmental problems. All social movements evolve from an earlier period of polarization and confrontation during which a minority struggles to convince society that its cause it is true and just, eventually followed by a time of reconciliation if a majority of the population accepts the values of the new movement. For the environmental movement this transition began to occur in the mid-1980s. The term sustainable development was adopted to describe the challenge of taking the new environmental values we had popularized, and incorporating them into the traditional social and economic values that have always governed public policy and our daily behavior. We cannot simply switch to basing all our actions on purely environmental values. Every day 6 billion people wake up with real needs for food, energy and materials. The challenge for sustainability is to provide for those needs in ways that reduce negative impact on the environment. But any changes made must also be socially acceptable and technically and economically feasible. It is not always easy to balance environmental, social, and economic priorities. Compromise and co-operation with the involvement of government, industry, academia and the environmental movement is required to achieve sustainability. It is this effort to find consensus among competing interests that has occupied my time for the past 15 years.

Why I Left Greenpeace After 15 Years

Greenpeace lost its humanitarian perspective and drifted into a belief that humans are the enemies of the earth

Greenpeace began to adopt positions that I did not agree with from a scientific perspective. The Ban Chlorine Worldwide campaign gave me no choice but to leave

Environmental policy should be based on science, facts, and logic. Greenpeace too often resorts to sensationalism, misinformation, and fear

20

The Allow Golden Rice Now! Campaign is a combination of education and direct action demonstrations, as in protests. Tonight’s meeting is the information component. Tomorrow we will begin the protest

In order to understand why an exemption should be made to allow Golden Rice it is useful to have a basic knowledge of plant breeding and human nutrition

To begin, “genetically modified” is a very general term. We are all genetically modified, a random melding of our mother’s and father’s genes. There are many ways to “genetically modify” our food crops

21

Some Useful Terms

Species – Organisms that can reproduce with each other and produce sexually viable offspring. Polar bears and grizzly bears are varieties of the same species, for example. Variety (plants and wild animals) and Breed (domestic animals) A sub-set of a species that has distinct characteristics from other varieties of that species. Cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and kale are all varieties of the same species. All domestic dogs are the same species. Trait – An observable and distinct characteristic of a species, such as eye color, growth rate, nutritional content, etc. Traits are what agronomists are breeding for to improve food crops. Gene – The DNA unit of a chromosome that produces certain proteins or enzymes that confers a particular trait. All breeding involves the selection of genes.

22

Natural Selection in Wild Nature

In the wild, species reproduce through natural selection. There is no human control over which individual mates with other individuals. This is similar for humans where individuals have a free choice over who they mate with. We are essentially a wild species in this regard, except for cultures where arranged marriage is prevalent, which is similar to conventional breeding in agriculture. “Horizontal Gene Transfer”, where genes are transferred from one species to another, is relatively common in nature. This occurs without human guidance but is very similar in nature to genetic modification.

23

Conventional Breeding is like arranged marriage. Individuals with desirable traits are selected and crossed. This is how plants and animals have been genetically modified since agriculture began more than 10,000 years ago

Text

Conventional Breeding

Mutation Breeding uses radiation and mutation-inducing chemicals to alter the DNA in seeds. It has been widely used since the 1930’s. Out of millions of treated seeds, perhaps one will have a desirable new trait. Many organic farmers use seeds produced by mutation breeding

Mutation Breeding

25

Marker-Assisted Breeding

Marker-Assisted Breeding uses our recent ability to map the genome and do conventional breeding with much more precision. In conventional breeding we can only see the traits that are visible to the eye. In marker-assisted breeding we can see the genes themselves

Recombinant DNA Biotechnology aka “Genetic Engineering” (GE) aka “Genetic Modification (GM)”

GM technology involves moving genes that express desirable traits from one species to another. It is a very precise method as compared to conventional breeding and mutational breeding. It is entirely organic. Unlike other breeding methods, the GM varieties are tested as if they were a new drug, with full clinical trials.

Organizations That Say GM Food is Safe

The American Medical Association The American Assn for the Advancement of Science The World Health Organization The National Academy of Sciences The Royal Society of Medicine (UK) The European Commission The American Council on Science and Health The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics The American Society for Cell Biology The American Society for Microbiology The American Society of Plant Sciences The International Seed Foundation The International Society of African Scientists The Federation of Animal Science Societies The Society of Toxicology The French Academy of Science The Union of German Academies The International Council for Science

The Main Biotech Crops Grown Today are Corn, Soybeans, Cotton and Canola. Many Others are in the Pipeline

Since 2002, when GM corn was introduced in the Philippines, farmers income has increased by $155 million per year

A farmer with Bt corn in the Philippines – Greenpeace warned of “dying children and cancer clusters”

Indian farmers forced the government to legalize Bt cotton

Since 2002 when GM cotton was introduced in India, production has more than doubled. India was a cotton-importing country. Today India exports 20% of its production. 70 million people are employed in cotton farming

Vitamin A Deficiency in Preschool-Age Children

250 million preschool children are vitamin A deficient. World Health Organization

Photo taken in India: December 2012 by Prof Ingo Potrykus

More than 2 million people die from diseases related to vitamin A deficiency every year. Golden Rice Project

Dr. Ingo Potrykus - Scientist, Humanitarian, Naturalist and co-Inventor of Golden Rice His work may one day end nutrient deficiency for hundreds of millions of people

Golden Rice has the potential to eliminate Vitamin A deficiency in developing countries, including 250,000 - 500,000 children who go blind every year due to vitamin A deficiency

Under the agreement reached among patent holders and the Golden Rice Project, any farmer in a developing country earning less than $10,000 a year will not have to pay a license fee for Golden Rice and will be able to save and replant the seed

36

Organizations that Support Golden Rice

The Golden Rice Humanitarian Board The International Rice Research Institute The Rockefeller Foundation Syngenta Foundation Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Philippine Rice Research institute Bangladesh Rice Research Institute Helen Keller International Biosafety Resources Network Biotechnology Institute of the Philippines Seed Stories United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

37

A Rice Field Trial at the Philippine Rice Research Institute

38

Urban activists, supported by Greenpeace (these are not farmers) destroying research crops in the Philippines in

August 2013

Greenpeace anti-GM Activists Claiming that Golden Rice is Deadly The Ultimate in Disinformation and Ignorance

Greenpeace claims that there has not been enough testing on GM foods, including Golden Rice. Yet when scientists conduct field tests and clinical nutrition tests, Greenpeace destroys the field tests and trashes the scientists who do the nutritional tests. Does Greenpeace really believe that feeding 24 Chinese children Golden Rice is worse that 500,000 children going blind every year, half of whom die within a year of becoming blind?

40 grams of Golden Rice a day is all that is needed to prevent blindness and death

42