Who is my master at the table?
If we are caught in the controversy over whether GM rice is safe, the debate will never end. What really matters in this tangle is whether the right to know and choose the right to use rice as the staple food has been respected.
The reporter / Pang Qinghui
Rice is one of the staple foods of the Chinese people. Each year, each Chinese consumes about 97 kilograms of rice, while China’s overall consumption is 170 million tons, accounting for 35.7% of China’s total grain output. However, Chinese consumers are not aware of the right to know and choose GM rice for planting and consumption.
“The vast majority of agricultural producers and food consumers are extremely fragmented and are facing enormous barriers to knowledge, language barriers, and technical barriers. They have not been able to express themselves.†Zhou Lixiang, Professor, School of Agriculture and Rural Development, Renmin University of China, China News Weekly Indicated.
Rice Transgenic Safety Certificate Approved
On November 27, 2009, Fang Lifeng, director of the food and agriculture project of Greenpeace, an international environmental protection organization that regularly visited various agricultural and food information, found a list. This list shows that the Ministry of Agriculture approved two kinds of genetically modified rice and a safety certificate for genetically modified corn. “This list was released long ago. Rice and corn were not used before, and it was added afterwards. Moreover, the validity period of the certificate and others The variety is not the same."
The "list" mentioned by Fang Lifeng is referred to as the "2009 Second Batch of Approval Certificates for Agricultural Genetically Modified Organisms" (hereinafter referred to as the "List"). According to the “China Biosafety Net†information published on the “Listâ€, the “List†was published on October 22, 2009. In the document entitled “Production Application Safety Certificate 2009B.pdfâ€, a total of insect-resistant hybrid cotton was used. There are 43 security certificates related to genetic recombination, such as the H9 subtype bird flu virus, and the approval numbers are numbered from No. 032 to No. 074 in the Agri-Certification Certificate (2009). The two "genetically modified rice" and "a type of genetically modified corn" questioned by Fang Lifeng are listed at 072-074 at the end of the list.
The official information from the "China Biosafety Network" shows that the network is sponsored by the Agriculture GMO Safety Management Office of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Science and Technology Development Center of the Ministry of Agriculture. In the “Approval Information†column of the website, the earliest release date of the “List†was October 22, 2009, and the modification time was October 27, 2009.
On October 22, when opening the “Listâ€, Fang Lifeng did not see the approved safety certificates for two varieties of genetically modified rice and one type of genetically modified corn. However, when it opened again on November 27, 2009, there were "two more."
On the road to the commercialization of genetically modified agricultural products, the acquisition of safety permits is the most difficult part to break through. The approval of the two kinds of genetically modified rice and a genetically modified corn safety certificate also means that the species’ production trials have ended, and it has been approved by the agricultural authorities, technical barriers have basically been removed, and GM rice and corn have been commercialized. The door took the most substantial step.
The first response to the approval of the security certificate is the daily limit of domestic and foreign stocks. On November 23, 2009, Nasdaq, the third-largest seed producer in China, had doubled its share price. The Fengle seed industry, which is known as "the first unit of genetically modified rice," strongly blocked the daily limit on December 2, 2009. In just one week, Fengle seed industry rose by as much as 23%. It is also the sign of seeing the daily limit of stocks. Let Fang Lifeng and others who are concerned about the approval of genetically modified safety certificates feel that "China's genetic modification is not a reassuring thing" and look for the list to find out.