Taking the Government to Court: What Are the Filipinos Opposing GM Rice Defending?

I. Golden Rice: Panacea or Poison?

In the human body, β-carotene is converted into vitamin A, potentially addressing vitamin A deficiency, which is widespread among children in Africa and Southeast Asia. Since its initial development in 1999, Golden Rice has been touted as a panacea “capable of saving a million children every year”, and its developer, Ingo Potrykus, made a high-profile appearance on the cover of Time magazine that year.

Yet the path to rolling out this supposed panacea in Asia — also a major region for rice production and consumption — proved far less smooth than imagined.

More than thirty organisations from at least eight Asian countries quickly established the Stop Golden Rice Network, taking action across scientific, legal, public education, mass mobilisation and street politics fronts. The Philippines saw the fiercest opposition of all. The April legal victory was merely the latest in a campaign that has stretched on for more than twenty years.

Why has Golden Rice met such fierce resistance from the Filipino public?

Much of it is thanks to the close collaboration between Filipino scientists, public-interest lawyers and farmers’ organisations.

MASIPAG, which has stood at the very front line of opposition to Golden Rice, was founded in 1985 by a group of plant breeders concerned with the interests of agriculture and farmers. That year, these scientists found that the Green Revolution — with its hallmarks of hybrid rice and agrochemicals — as promoted by the International Rice Research Institute, also based in the Philippines, had not only failed to lift Filipino farmers out of poverty but had instead brought about environmental pollution, public health problems and the loss of genetic resources. They went on to reflect on what kind of technology could truly benefit agriculture and farmers.

Before long, MASIPAG had grown into an NGO and scientists’ network that put farmers’ interests first, helping them take control of their own production through agroecology and plant-breeding training. From the outset, it was involved in the anti-Golden Rice social movement, organising countless public talks and forums at farmers’ markets and in primary and secondary schools across the Philippines.

It was at one of such talks that Lauro discovered how little is needed to see through the absurdity of Golden Rice: just a smidgeon of common sense.

“Many natural foods contain more β-carotene than Golden Rice — including the pumpkins and carrots we eat every day. Sweet potatoes have the highest content of all,” Lauro told us. “And both storage and cooking only speed up the loss of β-carotene in Golden Rice.”

Lauro, now 55, hails from Luzon in the central Philippines. Besides growing rice, he also works a few mu of hillside land, cultivating pineapples, papayas, bananas and an assortment of vegetables — a textbook traditional smallholder farmer in Southeast Asia: the harvest first meets the family’s own needs, and whatever is left over goes to market for a little income.

Having always practised crop diversification, Lauro strongly endorsed MASIPAG’s fundamental position against Golden Rice as a nutritional solution: obtain β-carotene from fresh fruit and vegetables, ensure everyone has access to healthy, diverse food — that is the only way to tackle malnutrition and hidden hunger at their root. Why go looking far and wide for what is right at hand?

In fact, the average β-carotene content of Golden Rice is just 3.57 micrograms per gram — a mere fraction of the 173 micrograms found in sweet potatoes. Expert witnesses for the plaintiffs, including MASIPAG, stated in court that if one relied solely on Golden Rice for vitamin A, an adult would have to eat 20 kilograms of rice every single day, roughly a third of China’s per-capita annual rice consumption — clearly an impossibility.

Worse still, Golden Rice not only fails to address vitamin A deficiency but also carries numerous safety concerns.

Dr Charito Medina, a crop scientist at MASIPAG, discovered in the publicly available toxicology report that the CRTI protein expressed in Golden Rice is homologous to three toxins found in snake venom. He pointed out that rice is the staple food of the Filipino people, and that long-term feeding studies and multi-generational feeding studies examining its chronic toxicity were absolutely essential. The assessors had reached a hasty conclusion that Golden Rice was safe based solely on acute toxicity test results — utterly irresponsible.

Besides β-carotene, Golden Rice also expresses other carotenoids. Could they produce antinutritional factors, or even be toxic? The report said not a word about it.

It was precisely because of the many uncertainties inherent in GM technology that the Convention on Biological Diversity adopted and brought into force the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety in the early twenty-first century. As a Party to the Protocol, the Philippines is obligated to enact legislation or develop corresponding regulatory policies to reduce the potential risks of GM technology.

Under current Philippine law, GM crops — whether for field trials, use as food or feed, direct use after processing, or commercial promotion — must undergo a thorough risk assessment conducted by the Department of Agriculture in consultation with relevant government departments and stakeholders before a Biosafety Permit can be issued.

One of the key reasons many environmental and biodiversity conservation organisations oppose GM technology is the risk of gene contamination. In these Philippine court proceedings, the plaintiffs’ witness, organic smallholder Mae Jethel Kapunan, voiced similar concerns.

Twenty-five years ago, Jethel transitioned from conventional farming to organic agriculture, growing primarily traditional rice varieties such as black rice, and has obtained Philippine organic certification. Under the regulations, he may not use chemical inputs or GM seeds. If Golden Rice were planted nearby, it would be difficult to guarantee that GM seeds would not find their way into his paddies. Moreover, although rice is a self-pollinating crop, it still has an outcrossing rate of 5 per cent; should gene contamination occur, the business he has built over many years could be wiped out overnight. Jethel also worried that, without separate processing, Golden Rice would inevitably contaminate the rice milling line.

Under the regulations, the government must not only conduct a thorough risk assessment before issuing a Biosafety Permit, but also carry out ongoing monitoring after issuance — for instance, to determine whether the gene contamination Jethel is concerned about is present.

Previously, defence witnesses had stated repeatedly in court that Golden Rice posed no risk of gene contamination, yet under cross-examination were forced to admit that the Department of Agriculture had yet to conduct any relevant monitoring, and that their information came solely from published literature with no empirical evidence to support it.

In fact, hybrid contamination caused by gene flow is common and is not unique to GM crops. But the uncertainties and potential harms associated with GM varieties far exceed those of gene variants already present in natural ecosystems.

Mutations introduced through genetic engineering can affect any gene or its regulatory sequences, triggering unexpected genetic changes that in turn alter gene expression. Figuratively speaking, it is like opening Pandora’s Box — we can never know what the next chain reaction triggered by a single mutation might be.

Take the CZW-3 GM squash, developed and approved by Monsanto in 1997: after the virus-resistance gene was inserted, the squash’s β-carotene content dropped by a factor of 68, while its sodium content rose to four times the original level.

Golden Rice’s faintly golden hue and reduced yields are themselves unexpected outcomes. According to the latest data from the Philippine Rice Research Institute, across three consecutive harvest seasons in 2022–2023, Golden Rice yields in the trial fields never reached the claimed four tonnes per hectare (equivalent to 533.33 jin per mu), falling one-third short of the isogenic rice line per mu. When converted at market prices, the output could not even cover production costs.

MASIPAG’s petition also cited the 1999 case of Bt cotton in India. The original design intended the Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) protein to serve as a pest-resistance mechanism within the cotton boll. Two years later, however, it was confirmed that its gene expression had shifted to the roots, stems and leaves, resulting in massive crop losses and driving many cotton farmers to suicide under crushing debt. In light of this, the Indian government has banned the field rollout of Bt brinjal.

After thoroughly hearing both sides, the Supreme Court of the Philippines delivered a ruling in favour of the plaintiffs, including MASIPAG, on 23 April 2023. The appellate court upheld the original verdict on 18 April this year, reaffirming the precautionary principle: “Where there is insufficient scientific certainty to establish a causal link between human activities and environmental impact, the case must be resolved through the application of the precautionary principle.”

The court further stated that the government’s role “should not be merely to approve the use of modern biotechnology, but to facilitate its safe and responsible use for the well-being of the people.”

Since Golden Rice and Bt brinjal are intended for direct consumption, consumer oversight mechanisms were a central concern in this case. Several judges took turns questioning defence witnesses: How would consumers know whether what they had bought was Bt brinjal? In the event of a food safety incident, how could an effective complaint be lodged?

Because the defendants insisted on the “substantial equivalence” of these two GM crops to their conventional counterparts, no labelling or traceability system had been established, leaving consumers with no means of telling the difference.

A defence witness further stated that the government would only reopen the risk assessment process if objections were raised against the assessment literature. At this point, even the judges grew exasperated, remarking that the threshold for consumer oversight was rather unrealistic.

Accordingly, the appellate court also issued a writ of continuing mandamus. This means that the burden of proof has shifted from consumers and users back to the promoters of GM technology — no relevant licences will be granted unless conclusive evidence of no harm to human health and the environment is presented.

III. Breaking Free from Control

Lauro had yet another reason for opposing Golden Rice. GM crops cannot be saved for seed, and they carry the risk of gene contamination. He feared that one day the traditional rice and aubergine varieties he had painstakingly preserved would be contaminated, and that he would be forced back onto the old path of purchasing commercial seeds.

It was precisely the high cost of external inputs in conventional farming that had originally prompted his shift to organic cultivation.

Fifty kilograms of fertiliser: 2,000 pesos. Seeds: 1,500 pesos. Lauro counted on his fingers as he worked out the bill for us — the annual input costs for his few mu of paddy. Three thousand five hundred pesos works out to roughly 380 yuan in renminbi, and considering that he must also hand over eight sacks of rice to the landlord each harvest season, it is no small expense.

That is right — Lauro is a tenant farmer. Eliseo told us that seven out of ten smallholder farmers in the Philippines are landless, paying rent in kind to their landlords. “Absolutely medieval, isn’t it?”

Since colonial times, large landlords have controlled the vast majority of the Philippines’ land. The post-decolonisation Philippine government has carried out multiple rounds of land reform — for example, reducing rent in kind to twenty-five per cent and buying back land from landlords to sell to tenant farmers — yet the problem of landlessness among farmers remains deeply entrenched and stubbornly resistant to change.

MASIPAG’s long-standing partner, Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), has been active on the front line of the fight for farmers’ land rights. MASIPAG, meanwhile, has taken a different path: by connecting scientists and farmers, helping farmers save and breed traditional varieties themselves, and delivering training in low-input agroecological techniques, it enables farmers to reduce their dependence on external inputs such as fertilisers, pesticides and purchased seeds.

Eliseo believes that only when farmers have autonomy over their choice of means of production and farming methods can their livelihoods truly improve — and that this is, in the end, a different route to the same goal as the fight for land rights.

This echoes the words of agronomist Perfecto Vicente, MASIPAG’s first project coordinator, who once told farmers: “The most important thing for you is freedom … freedom from chemical and seed companies controlling you. This freedom is both your right and your privilege. If you can keep and breed your own seeds, then you are truly strong.”

Lauro learned to breed rice only after joining MASIPAG. He believes that traditional varieties which farmers purify and rejuvenate themselves are more adaptable and better equipped to withstand extreme weather — the only way to guarantee “the family’s food security.”

After nearly forty years of effort, MASIPAG has trained more than seventy farmer breeders like Lauro and successfully conserved over 2,000 rice varieties, including more than 600 traditional rice varieties, 506 farmer-bred varieties, and 1,299 rice varieties improved by MASIPAG scientists.

IV. The Long Fight

In an interview with Foodthink, Eliseo said this was far from a final victory — MASIPAG still had to prepare for a possible Supreme Court hearing.

At the same time, they were beginning to worry about a media backlash and smearing from the defence. Backing GM crops are not only deep-pocketed agri-chemical and seed companies but also mega-donors like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Ever since GM technology emerged, they have spared no expense, deploying every kind of publicity and legal tactic to dominate the narrative and to intimidate any resistance along their path of development with prohibitively costly legal proceedings.

But no matter how things unfold from here, Eliseo could at least breathe a little easier.

At a time when global GM crop acreage grows year on year and the commercialisation of GM staple food crops seems poised to take off, Eliseo also hopes the Philippine court’s ruling can serve as a judicial precedent that other countries can invoke — Mexico, for instance, which has been mired in lawsuits over its GM maize ban.

In 2023, Mexico’s president banned the direct human consumption of GM maize products, citing harm to native traditional varieties and health risks — a move that directly affected the United States’ annual USD 5 billion export interest.

Washington protested that Mexico’s action violated free trade agreements. Meanwhile, several international legal frameworks, including the Nagoya Protocol and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, provide strong safeguards for farmers’ rights to save their own seed. Whether mediation can protect the interests of Mexico’s smallholder farmers and consumers remains to be seen.

Eliseo told us that MASIPAG would not rest on its legal victory. Faced with the global climate crisis and a steady stream of false solutions, smallholder farmers — who feed seventy per cent of the world’s population with limited resources — deserve far greater support.

So their next step is to lobby actively, pushing Philippine agricultural policy to tilt in favour of smallholder farmers and agroecology. As MASIPAG puts it on its website:

“By investing in farmer-led initiatives

and championing policies that prioritise food sovereignty,

we can build a food system

more resilient and fair,

nourishing humanity and the Earth.”

Author for Foodthink

zeen

Foodthink editor

 

 

 

 

Thanks to Guan Qi (Farmer Seed Network) and Dr Li Shumeng for their support during the writing of this article

Editing: Tianle