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[antigone382]

116. Those rice varieties are not the great revolution they were made out to be.

Often the issue with vitamin-A deficiency is not lack of the vitamin-A itself, but other nutritional deficiencies which limit the body's ability to *uptake* available vitamin-A. There are plenty of other crops indigenous to many of these areas that are rich in beta-carotene, such as sweet potatoes, which are not the patented property of a single corporation thus far. In addition, I believe I have read that the particular form of vitamin-A present in "golden rice" is not a very bioavailable form, but I'll have to double check on that.

To be honest, I think you're reading more into this post than what's there. I don't see "the blanket assumption that all organic foods are better" anywhere in the post, nor even a blanket condemnation of GMO food. I see a parent pissed that their child has been instructed on one side of an issue that is indeed quite fraught, with the other side dismissed and reduced to a paragraph.

There are indeed legitimate reasons for condemning what GMO's represent from an economic and ecological standpoint. The problem with GMO's is *not* just that they may or may not be harmful to human health. The problem is that they fundamentally change the economics of farming in ways that put farmers at huge risks and make them dependent on very expensive chemical and mechanical inputs. Moreover, these crops have not really delivered what they have claimed; "golden" rice is the exception as far as nutritional enhancements or other "miracle improvements" go.

Most GMO's such as Bt corn and "Round-up Ready" crops are intended to complement or facilitate pesticide use. I won't go into the potential ecological harm of such technologies. However, pests are inevitably going to develop resistance to such mechanisms, but now the solutions will have to come, not from individual farmers developing varieties over time based on what performs the best in their unique ecology, but from very expensive and potentially risky technological enhancements under the exclusive control of some of the wealthiest corporations in the world. That is a problem.