Golden Rice Report (Environmental Biotechnology Course) Essay

Golden Rice Report (Environmental Biotechnology Course) - Essay Example The reasons for the creation of the specific type of rice are explored; also the methodology employed by researchers working on this project will be presented. It is proved that despite its prospects, ‘Golden Rice’ has not managed to meet the expectations of its creators; in fact, the benefits of ‘Golden Rice’ were not actually the ones promised by the researchers who developed it. The above fact leads to the assumption that the development of the specific product was not carefully planned; in this way, its appearance in the market was not finally justified – despite the approval and the support of the international community, for instance, the European Commission. Golden Rice was developed in Europe – under the pressure for improving genes in rice in order to respond to the health needs of people in developing countries – where rice is the food most consumed. In any case, Golden Rice is a genetically modified food; more accurately, Golden Rice is ‘a genetically engineered strain of rice’ (BioEthics Project Education, 2010); it was presented to the public for first time in 2000; since then, the researchers have tried to further develop Golden Rice but it seems that this target is far from being achieved; in fact, through the years, it was proved that Golden Rice could not guarantee the benefits of health that its creators claimed. The pitfalls reported – in regard to the benefits of Golden Rice – have led to the development of a new strain – referring to the 2nd generation of Golden Rice known also as Golden Rice 2 (BioEthics Project Education, 2010). Golden Rice has been created mainly in order to help controlling the deficiency in Vitamin A which has been found to be related with severe health problems of million of people worldwide – leading even to death when the level of deficiency of Vitamin A is high; in accordance with a series of data published by