Vitamin A deficiency is a deadly threat to kids and pregnant mothers in the Third World. In the Philippines, the best nutrient sources are rarely part of the daily diet, so researchers have tried adding a critical nutrient, vitamin A to rice, a staple food.
Each year, at least a half-million children and a few hundred thousand women go blind or die for lack of this crucial micronutrient. The best sources of vitamin A, meats and leafy vegetable, expensive and often unavailable, are rarely part of the daily diet here.
That’s why researchers in the Philippines are working to add vitamin A to the daily staple, rice. But the rice they’re meticulously breeding has become the gold standard for a heated debate over genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.
Related on the SLP
PBS science correspondent Miles O’Brien investigates the debate that’s grown up over the development of golden rice.
Read the full, original transcript: GMO debate grows over golden rice in the Philippines
