Chinese Corporation Successfully Harvests Rice Modified for the Diabetes Market

The Province of Heilongjiang's China Yingxia International, Inc., a health products company, on Friday announced that it had achieved a successful harvesting of its W3660 breed of rice targeting the diabetes market.

"It is a terrific technical and logistical accomplishment to have successfully grown, on a large-scale, this breed of rice. In line with our earlier discussions to investors, we are now in position to bring this to market next month in November. We are particularly excited about this product. Because it is a proprietary breed of rice specially targeted at diabetes patients, the selling price and margins from the rice is significantly higher than ordinary rice. This further validates our strategy of using proprietary breeds of agricultural products to produce higher margins for our investors," stated Ms. Jiao Yingxia, Chairman and CEO of Yingxia, as she personally visited the farms where the rice was harvested on October 9th.

Rice is known to be the world's most important staple crop and is a major source of sustenance for approximately 1.6 billion human beings. The majority of the world's rice crop is grown in China, Japan, Australia, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, and Burma.

It is estimated that globally over 600 million people get more than 50% of their calories from rice.

Being so important, rice has been a target crop for improvement through genetic modification since the earliest days of that technology's development.

Indeed, rice was the first crop plant to be genetically sequenced, and breakthroughs with it have helped scientists with developing GM versions of other crops that are genetically very close to rice, such as corn and wheat.

The latest development by China Yingxia International comes in the wake of a recent statement by Dr. Suzanne Wuerthele of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency when commenting on genetic modification of rice crops in order to make them more nutritious. "The costs, hazards and practicalities of genetically engineering a staple crop in developing countries to contain a powerful drug should be compared with the cost and ease of simply identifying deficient individuals and supplying them with Vitamin supplements, or of ensuring that the poor have access to a more nutritious diet," said Dr. Wuerthele.

However, critics say such statements are merely irresponsible fear mongering and show an emotional armoring against change. The normally conservative World Health Organization has stated that current varieties of GM foods "are not likely to present risks for human health. In addition, no ((negative)) effects on human health have been shown as a result of the consumption of such foods by the general population in the countries where they have been approved."

Sources:
China Yingxia International, Inc. (PR Newswire), "China Yingxia Announces Successful Harvesting of Rice Aimed at Diabetes Market"
"Vitamin A enhanced GE crops: potential problems"
Baily, Ronald, "A Tale of Two Scientific Consensuses"