Last August, vandals, cheered on by Greenpeace and other NGOs hostile to crop biotechnology, destroyed a field trial of Golden Rice in the Philippines. The rice has been ready for farmers to use since the turn of the 21st century, yet it is still not available to them. Escalating requirements for testing have stalled its release for more than a decade. Now with those hurdles almost overcome, opponents of precision plant breeding have taken to lawlessness. A group of the world’s top scientists have come together under the banner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science to issue a joint statement condemning this behavior, reaffirming the organization’s commitment for an evidence-based evaluation of this new technology:

Bruce Alberts, former President of the National Academy of Sciences

Roger Beachy, founding president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center

David Baulcombe, Royal Society Research Professor and Regius Professor of Botany at the University of Cambridge

Gunter Blobel, Nobel Prize laureate in Physiology

Swapan Datta, Deputy Director General (Crop Science) of Indian Council of Agricultural Research

Nina Fedoroff, former President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Donald Kennedy, former Commissioner of the United States Food and Drug Administration

Gurdev S. Khush, World Food Prize laureate

Jim Peacock, former President of the Australian Academy of Sciences

Martin Rees, former President of the Royal Society

Phillip Sharp, Nobel Prize laureate

Read the full, original story here: “Standing Up for GMOs”

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