Tough potatoes and golden rice: Genetic engineers in Canada have made a type of potato which stops fungal blight. Blight is one of the worst diseases of potatoes. It was partly the cause of the great famine in Ireland (1845) in which tens of thousands of people died of starvation because their main food crop - the potato - was wiped out for several years in a row by blight. The special potatoes have been engineered to make two common peptides (peptides are what proteins are made out of) which honey bees and moths use to protect themselves against microbes. Early tests on these GE potatoes suggest that they are harmless. [1]
Rich
golden rice: Many poor people can afford to eat little but ordinary rice
which lacks key nutrients like vitamin A. A new type of golden-coloured GE rice
which contains all of a person's vitamin A needs could end this deficiency and
the diseases it causes. [2]. But there are possible dangers
associated with vitamin A toxicity and some consider this sort of thing to be
industry 'greenwash'. ("...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." Dr Suzanne Wuerthele, US Environmental Protection
Agency)