Carl Pray, Jikun Huang
Despite making enormous strides in reducing poverty, hunger, and
malnutrition, China still has large numbers of people who do not consume
sufficient micronutrients such as iron, zinc and Vitamin A. To meet this
need, government agencies in China are supporting programs in industrial
fortification and vitamin supplements.
In recent years the government has also supported research on
biofortification of major grain crops using both conventional plant
breeding and transgenic techniques. The article assesses the potential
political barriers to the acceptance of biofortified crops and concludes
that biofortification using non-transgenic techniques would probably not
face much opposition, while biofortification with transgenic techniques
might have a more difficult time. The article then assesses which groups
in China are likely to support or oppose biofortification and then
proposes some strategies that the government and international agencies
might use if they decide to support biofortification.

Introduction
Despite making enormous strides in reducing poverty, hunger, and
malnutrition, China still has large numbers of people who do not consume
sufficient micronutrients such as iron, zinc and Vitamin A. In response
to this problem, the Chinese government, in some cases with the
assistance of the international community, has developed a number of
programs to reduce micronutrient deficiencies.

China has had mandatory food fortification programs since 1994. One of
the first fortification programs was the salt iodization program started
in the 1990s, which is credited with a dramatic decrease in goiter in
the last 10 years (Micronutrient Initiative [MI], 2004). The second was
the distribution of Vitamin A supplements (MI, 2004). Two newer
food-fortification programs have been initiated since 2002. The first,
which began in January 2003, supports fortification of flour with
Vitamins A and B in the Western Chinese provinces. The second
program?fortification of soy sauce with iron?started in January 2003 and
is active in five provinces and two cities working with 14 producers.

Since the late 1990s, Chinese plant scientists have begun trying to
develop rice, wheat, and maize that contain elevated levels of iron,
zinc, and Vitamin A. China has one of the largest plant-breeding
programs in the world and in 1992 was the first country to introduce a
transgenic crop (tobacco) for commercial production. Some of the
biofortified crops are being developed using conventional plant breeding
while others, such as Golden Rice, are being developed through genetic
engineering.

The objective of this article is to review China?s experience with food
fortification, transgenic crops, and biofortification to identify
political constraints to the development and adoption of
biofortification and sources of their political support. In addition to
analyzing the political landscape for biofortification technologies,
this article suggests components of a strategy that could be used to
encourage the spread of biofortification.

Political Responses to GMOs, Biofortified Crops, Fortified Foods, or
Mandatory Fortification
Cases of political opposition to non-GM bio­fortification or industrial
fortification in China have been rare or non-existent. Popkin (1998)
mentions some difficulties in enforcing the mandatory fortification of
salt with iodine. The fortification processing is decentralized. As a
result, it is expensive to monitor. The costs of fortification are high
relative to the price of the product, which pushes up prices and gives
both producers and consumers incentives to ignore the rules. We did not
find examples of political resistance to fortified food or papers that
described controversy within the Chinese government about food
fortification.

In contrast to industrial fortification, there has been some resistance
to GM crops. China was the first country to introduce a transgenic crop
for commercial production. Virus-resistant tobacco was first planted by
farmers in 1992. Tomatoes with a long shelf life and resistance to
virus, sweet peppers with virus resistance, and color-altered GM
petunias were also grown in small amounts starting in the mid-1990s. In
1997 the first Chinese Biosafety Committee was established. It approved
insect-resistant cotton and the tomatoes, sweet peppers, chili peppers
and petunias that were already in the field. Since 1997 only two new
genes or new crops were approved for commercial
production?virus-resistant papaya and insect-resistant poplar tree
varieties, which were approved in 2006.

The early approvals of GM crops were driven by scientists who were also
the de facto regulators. These scientists knew that these technologies
had been extensively tested in the United States and that many of them
had been approved in the US biosafety regulatory system. The GM crops
faced little opposition unless they could cause export problems or if
multinationals threatened to take a large market share. We can
distinguish three types of negative responses to the introduction of
GMOs. The first type is a commercial response based on the risk of
commercial losses to Chinese companies and is settled between the
government and commercial interests before reaching the level of public
controversy. The second type of response is a bureaucratic response
consisting of power struggles over which part of government will control
the technology and the bureaucratic resources needed to regulate the
technology. In China, these struggles usually are resolved within the
various parts of the Chinese and regional governments without recourse
to public debate. The third type of response is a political response
because it is fought out in public and involves government agencies,
NGOs, and commercial interest groups.

An example of commercial response is the demise of GM tobacco in the
mid-1990s. First approved in 1992, GM tobacco varieties were grown on
1.8 million ha by 1997 (James, 1997). The China National Tobacco
Corporation (CNTC) and perhaps also Peking University, which inserted
the transgenes into tobacco varieties, profited from this technology. By
reducing farmers? costs of production, CNTC could pay them a lower price
for tobacco leaves and increase its profits. However, some of these
profits and a substantial amount of foreign currency would be lost if
CNTC lost important international tobacco customers. Some American
tobacco companies using Chinese tobacco for Japanese markets expressed
concern about possible negative reaction of Japanese consumers to
cigarettes containing transgenic tobacco. As a result, the Chinese
government pulled this GM technology off the market in the late 1990s
(Jia & Peng, 2002).

Chinese scientists and bureaucrats have debated internally whether China
should have mandatory refugia (plots of non-Bt cotton to prevent the
rapid development of bollworms that are resistant to Bt) for Bt cotton
since the mid-1990s. Their debate was resolved initially through a
bureaucratic response. Several meetings of scientists and policy makers
were held to discuss this topic and the decision was made that the
extensive planted areas of crops such as corn and vegetables that are
also hosts for bollworm made mandatory refugia unnecessary. The
difficulty of enforcing refugia on millions of small farmers also may
have played an important role in this bureaucratic decision.

The first public attack on Chinese GM crops alleged that refugia for Bt
cotton are necessary but were not possible under Chinese conditions and
that Bt cotton was damaging biodiversity as measured by the number of
insect predators of cotton pests. This attack was launched in 2001 by
Greenpeace and Professor Xue Dayuan of the Nanjing Institute of
Environmental Studies (NIES), one of three research institutes under the
State Environmental Protection Authority (SEPA). Xue?s report, published
on Greenpeace?s website and by NIES, implied that Bt cotton should be
regulated more effectively or taken off the market (Xue, 2002); Xue?s
argument ignored the large economic and health benefits that small
farmers receive from this technology.

The Chinese Ministry of Agriculture?s (MOA) public response sought to
discredit Xue?s report (Keeley, 2003). And while the MOA itself made no
official public response, Xue?s conclusions, based in part on
unpublished research by Dr. Wu Kongming, were contradicted by a series
of papers that Wu published in 2002 indicating that he found no
significant pest resistance to Bt cotton in the field or an increase in
insect predators in Bt cotton fields (Wu, Gao, & Gao, 2002a; Wu, Guo,
Nan, Greenplate, & Deaton, 2002b).

This debate on refugia continues through occasional internal discussions
between scientists and regulators, but the Chinese government has chosen
not to cut back on the use of Bt cotton, and it has not required that
farmers grow non-Bt cotton as refugia. However, it has not ignored the
potential importance of refugia, which is supported by research by Dr.
Wu and other scientists. When Bt corn was proposed for commercialization
by Monsanto in the late 1990s, one of the main reasons given for not
approving it was that corn is an alternative host for bollworms and
provides a ?natural? refuge for susceptible bollworms.

Monsanto?s dominance over the international biotechnology industry has
evoked a commercial and bureaucratic response by Chinese scientists,
officials, and seed companies. The government?s concern is that seeds
are too important to Chinese food security to be dominated by foreign
companies. In addition, some scientists and officials have a financial
stake in local seed companies that benefit from protection against
competition.

In the early 1990s the US-based companies Monsanto and Delta and
Pineland (DPL) started testing a number of GM cotton varieties in
collaboration with the national Cotton Research Institute of the Chinese
Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) at Anyang, Henan Province.
Monsanto and DPL developed the joint venture company, JiDai, with the
Hebei provincial and county seed companies to produce and market the GM
cotton variety 33B. At the same time, the Biotechnology Research
Institute (BRI), another part of CAAS, had developed their own Bt cotton
varieties, and was developing partnerships with other provincial seed
companies to market their varieties.

In 1997 at the Chinese Biosafety Committee?s first meeting, the BRI Bt
cotton varieties were approved for use in nine provinces, but JiDai?s
33B was turned down with a request for more information. At the second
1997 Biosafety Committee meeting, JiDai?s 33B was approved, but only for
the Hebei Province. By 2003, JiDai varieties still had not been approved
for cultivation in Henan Province despite ecological and agronomic
conditions virtually identical to Hebei and Shandong and the fact that
?illegal? cultivation of 33B was being conducted successfully there.
Keeley (2003) concludes that BRI was able to influence the Biosafety
Committee not to approve JiDai varieties for Henan in order to limit
competition.

GM rice production in China has created far more political controversy
than production of GM cotton, tobacco, or vegetables. Government
scientists developed transgenic rice with a gene from African rice that
provides resistance to bacterial blight. It was approved for trials in
open fields in 1997 and one variety entered pre-production trials in
2001. Significant progress has also been made with rice varieties able
to control rice stem borers and leaf rollers with Bt and cowpea trypsin
inhibitor (CpTI) genes. These varieties started field trials in the late
1990s and have been in pre-production trials since 2001. None of these
transgenic rice varieties have been approved anywhere else in the world.
So, there is little scientific evidence on their safety elsewhere. In
addition the scientists who created these varieties had not done much
research on the food safety or environmental impact before 2000. In that
year, the government commissioned a number of studies by the Ministry of
Health on the food safety of transgenic rice and studies by MOA on the
environmental impact of these rice varieties. Both Ministries found that
there were no problems, but the reports were never published.

The political campaign against GM rice research started with a
Greenpeace-financed survey in 2003 on consumer attitudes towards
biotechnology conducted by a university faculty member in Guangzhou,
China (Greenpeace, 2004). It reported that Chinese consumers were very
negative about biotechnology and GM food. The survey was posted on the
Greenpeace-China website and generated press coverage in Hong Kong and
outside China but was never published in a refereed academic journal.

The Greenpeace campaign then focused on GM rice starting in 2004. In
that year the MOA was close to approving for commercial production the
GM rice variety with the African rice gene resistant to bacterial leaf
blight. Greenpeace launched an attack on GM rice from their website
claiming that GM rice may be dangerous to people?s health and the
environment and that the Chinese government has not researched its food
safety or environmental effects. This stimulated an immediate electronic
debate involving almost 10,000 emails through several major Chinese
websites before these websites closed off the discussions as they veered
from the technology itself to personal attacks on scientists involved.

In fact, the Chinese government has studied the impact of the Bt genes
and rice pollen flow (Jia & Peng, 2002). However, these studies have not
been publicized or published in academic journals. The government
departments that regulate and fund scientific studies on these topics
rarely challenge Greenpeace?s assertions publicly.

In 2005, Greenpeace produced samples, allegedly from farmers? fields, of
rice seed for planting and rice in consumer markets that both contained
a Bt gene, according to tests by Genescan (a German lab). They said that
they sampled rice from fields and markets near Wuhan. GM rice could be
grown legally near Wuhan as part of extensive pre-production field
trials run by the government. However, neither the rice produced in
these trials nor the seed was supposed to be sold. The Greenpeace claims
were published in the English language and Chinese press. Greenpeace
attracted more publicity by allegedly finding Bt protein in Heinz baby
food in Beijing in a Carrefour store in Wuhan, in Guangzhou and Hong
Kong markets, and most recently in Chinese rice noodles sold in Europe
(see www.greenpeace.org.hk).

The response of the Chinese government has been to investigate the
allegations. Some Chinese scientists have cast doubt on the reliability
of Greenpeace?s testing. However, the Greenpeace-inspired publicity
seems to have made government officials and scientists very cautious
about GM rice.

One of the interesting parts of the Chinese story is what has not caused
controversies. Early permits to produce GM tobacco, cotton, sweet
peppers, tomatoes, and petunia caused no political controversy. This was
primarily due to timing?before 1997 there was relatively little
controversy about GM crops any place in the world, and there was little
known publicly about biotechnology in China. Virus-resistant GM papaya
and insect-resistant GM poplar trees were approved in 2006 for
cultivation with little fanfare or public resistance. It is not clear
why they have not created any controversy.

Another non-controversy has been the importation of GM commodities. Many
varieties of GM maize, soybeans, and canola are cleared for importation.
They are being extensively imported and soybean oil is being labeled as
GM. Consumption of GM-labeled soybean oil has provoked little consumer
resistance (Lin, Tuan, Dai, & Zhong, 2006).

During the initial years, 1999 to 2003, importation of GM soybean was
debated, but the debate has waned. Opposition was mainly from
governments of major soybean-producing regions (e.g., Northeast China,
particularly the Heilongjiang province, where soybean accounts for about
50% of total crop area) wanting protection from competition. The
processing industry and traders supported GM soybean imports because
they wanted inexpensive inputs and it is virtually impossible for China
to be self-sufficient in oilseeds. In addition, the US government
pressured the Chinese government to allow imports of soybeans. There was
also some concern from environmental institutions such as SEPA, who were
concerned that some of the GM soybeans might be planted and influence
biodiversity in the center of the origin of soybeans.

Beneficiaries of Industrial Food Fortification and Biofortification
To assess how important it is to work toward commercialization of GM or
biofortified crops and to identify who would support or oppose these
technologies with the government would be useful to have an assessment
of their possible impact. Such a study was beyond the scope of this
article, but there is some evidence available on current and potential
impact.

MI?s website (2006) describes the impact of micronutrient deficiencies
in China that could be prevented or reduced through food fortification:
more than 20,000 child deaths each year from increased susceptibility to
infection; approximately 12% of China?s children are growing up with
lowered immunity, leading to frequent ill health and poor growth; deaths
of up to 1,000 young Chinese women every year in pregnancy and
childbirth; approximately 100,000 Chinese infants a year at increased
risk of death immediately before or after birth; and approximately
35,000 to 40,000 severe birth defects annually, including infantile
paralysis.

Food supplements and fortification are starting to have some
impact?presumably primarily in urban areas. The MI (2006) reports that
the Vitamin A supplementation programs in China were estimated in 1998
to be saving the lives of approximately 70,000 children a year and
preventing a similar number of cases of permanent blindness. More than
90% of China?s newborns are currently being protected to some degree
against mental impairment by adding iodine to household salt.

The total goiter rate has been lowered from more than 50% to about 5% in
the last decade. However, this still leaves poor areas in the
countryside?particularly hilly and mountainous areas which are not well
integrated into the market economy?with major Vitamin A, Vitamin B,
iron, and zinc deficiencies to be mitigated by biofortified foods.

Organizations that Could Support the Development and/or Introduction of
Biofortified Crops
Potential Allies for GM Fortification
The major institutional and financial supporter of GM research and
technology development in China has been the Ministry of Science and
Technology (MOST). MOST has invested heavily in biotechnology through
three major research programs?the 863 program for applied research, the
973 program for basic research, and the Transgenic Engineering Crops
Breeding Special Funds for GMO commercialization.

Other supporters of GM technology are scientists working on developing
transgenic plants. The leaders include the President of the China
Agricultural University, Beijing; leaders of the Chinese Academy of
Sciences; CAAS and biotech scientists at Central China Agricultural
University, Wuhan; and the Hunan Hybrid Rice Research Center. However,
few of the most influential Chinese scientists have GM biofortification
research programs.

Scientists involved in GM biofortification projects also are obvious
supporters. There are three official institutional collaborators with
the international Golden Rice project, such as the Yunnan Academy of
Agricultural Sciences. In addition, one of the pioneers of biotechnology
research at CAAS has been involved with biofortification as the leader
of the Chinese HarvestPlus program since 2005.

Farmers could be major economic and health beneficiaries of GM food
crops like disease- and insect-resistant rice. In addition, poor farmers
are likely to be the main beneficiaries of biofortified crops because
they are the ones who do not get access to supplements and commodities
with industrial fortification. However, farmers in China are not
mobilized into political organizations that can push for new technology
which suggests that the farm community is unlikely to provide strong
political support for biofortification.

There are a number of government-owned and local private seed companies
that made money selling the new Bt cotton seeds that could be supporters
of GM crops. If the yield and other traits of the biofortified varieties
are the same as the local varieties, they would probably have to make
money by selling biofortified varieties to the government for
distribution in poor areas where nutrition is a concern. If the trait
can be put into a hybrid rice, corn, or wheat cultivars that yield more
than the local varieties, then commercial companies might push these
varieties on their own Multinational companies.

International biotechnology companies would be obvious collaborators in
pushing GM technology in general. They are very interested in having
China approve GM rice (or wheat), which they believe would help open
both Chinese and world markets to transgenic crops. In China, the
multinationals Pioneer, Monsanto, and perhaps others have breeding
programs on conventional maize hybrids, sunflower hybrids, and sorghum
hybrids. Only one multinational?Syngenta?has any explicit interest in a
GM biofortified crop?Golden Rice. Other companies, such as Monsanto and
DuPont, have research on GM and conventional maize with improved
qualities, such as high protein for cattle feed. In addition, US food
and feed companies that operate in China, such as Cargill, are
interested in improved quality maize mainly for animal feed. Elsewhere
in the world, these multinationals are working to biofortify crops that
can produce improved quality cooking oil, omega-3, and other traits for
humans.

The US Embassy, particularly the agricultural attaché?s office, is
another obvious ally. They have been very active in encouraging China to
import GM crops.

Potential Allies for Non-GM Biofortification
For biofortified crops produced through conventional plant breeding,
genomics, and marker-aided selection, several groups in addition to
supporters of GM biofortified crops are potential allies: government and
private sector plant breeders who use these techniques, commercial seed
companies, the food fortification industry, and supermarket firms.

Many conventional plant breeders in government institutions have felt
that MOST and MOA were putting too much money into developing transgenic
crops. Many of these breeders would welcome programs that financed the
use of conventional techniques, genomics, and marker-aided selection to
improve the nutritional qualities of their crops.

The private seed industry would also be interested in incorporating
nutritional traits if these were linked to improved agronomic traits in
hybrid crops such as rice, maize, sunflower, and sorghum. These
companies also could be interested in producing nutritionally improved
varieties if the government guaranteed a market for these crops, even if
they contain no improved agronomic traits. Finally, if consumers, the
food industry, or supermarkets were willing to pay a sufficiently high
premium for enhanced nutrition, they would be happy to supply it.

Government organizations responsible for the health of Chinese citizens
are another potential ally of biofortification. Many of them are already
involved in food fortification and some have signed on to the Global
Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) programs, which emphasize food
fortification. GAIN has helped create a Chinese National Fortification
Alliance (NFA), which includes agencies such as the Ministry of Health,
Ministry of Finance, State Bureau of Grains, the China Center for
Disease Control (CCDC), and the China Center for Public Nutrition and
Development. It does not appear to include the Ministry of Agriculture.

Other potential allies are the Chinese and international food and
supermarket industries. Forty Chinese companies and 35 international
companies agreed in October 2005 to the ?Beijing Declaration on Food
Fortification.? The Declaration is part of a worldwide program in which
food industry leaders pledge to ?Seek and pursue opportunities to
produce and distribute affordable fortified foods around the world, and
in the developing world particularly? (GAIN/BAFF, 2005, p. 4).

Like the government agencies described above, the food industry will
cooperate with biofortification groups if they see that it is in their
interest to do so. If they can get more government contracts, a
competitive advantage in marketing their products, or lower costs of
production, they will be interested and cooperative.

Several trends in the Chinese food industry indicate that Chinese
consumers would welcome biofortified foods. There is a ?healthy food?
component of the Chinese food industry. Such companies have established
a market niche of fortified foods. In addition, a broader range of
consumers are becoming aware of the importance of food fortification
through government programs to reduce micronutrient deficiency.

Local Organizations or Institutions Most Likely to Resist the
Development or Introduction of New GMOs and/or Biofortified Crops
The organization most actively opposing GM crops in China is Greenpeace
International, which established its Greenpeace-China affiliate office
in Hong Kong in 1997 and more recently has established offices in
Guangzhou and Beijing. Its website lists ?food safety? as a priority.
For Greenpeace-China, food safety appears to consist almost entirely of
stopping GM crops (Greenpeace, n.d.). They are clearly opposed to Golden
Rice because it is GM. Their arguments against Golden Rice?there are
other sources of Vitamin A that are more ?natural,? etc.?could also be
leveled at biofortified crops, but so far they do not seem to be
concerned about non-GM biofortified crops.

Greenpeace is the only major international anti-biotech NGO working in
China. Its presence in China is due in large part to its collaboration
with the Chinese environmental agency, SEPA. Top officials in China
clearly are more skeptical about GM crops than they were five years ago.
This undoubtedly is due partly to Greenpeace?particularly its campaign
against GM rice; but other material on the web and the general
skepticism of Europe, Korea, and Japan about GM crops has made an
impression on these officials and the public. Chinese employees of
foreign biotech companies interviewed in China expressed the opinion
that Greenpeace had been effective in changing Chinese attitudes about
GM crops.

SEPA is the Chinese government Ministry most opposed to GM crops. Its
opposition reflects both genuine concern about the problems that GM
crops might cause the environment and bureaucratic self-interest. SEPA
is the center of most international?particularly European?donor activity
on the environment. It is the Chinese government agency that both
negotiated and is supposed to implement the Convention on Biodiversity.
In addition, SEPA would like to have a much larger role in the
regulation of biotechnology. At present, the Ministry of Agriculture
runs the biosafety regulatory system for agricultural biotechnology, and
the State Forest Bureau (SFB) runs the biosafety regulatory system for
forest biotechnology. Thus, the staff, budget, and other bureaucratic
resources of the regulatory role are in MOA and SFB instead of SEPA.

MOA is the Chinese Ministry which is the currently the major constraint
on GM rice commercialization. Most government officials in Beijing
Ministries with whom we have spoken, other than MOST, express personal
concern over the potential risks of approving GM foods. On the other
hand, many non-GM agricultural scientists oppose production and
consumption of GM foods because they not only believe they receive less
funding for their research because of GM research, but also think their
technology is as good as GM technology, with less food safety risks.

Officials? concerns about the negative health effects may be due to
their interpretation of the media. The internet and the regulated
official media are major sources of information for officials. The
internet has extensive anti-biotech information that is not available
through official channels. Official newspapers are more neutral in
reporting about GMOs, but China?s official media neutrality about news
on GM foods could be interpreted by officials as ?maybe not good? or
?maybe there are some problems.?

Based on personal discussions with officials, we conclude that MOA
leaders have not approved the commercialization of insect- or
disease-resistant GM rice for several reasons:

1. Rice is the major food crop, not some minor crop. MOA leaders do
not want to risk a mistaken decision because it could cost them their
careers.
2. There are concerns about food safety of GM rice.
3. There are concerns about whether consumers will accept GM rice and
also about rice exports.
4. Currently, there are no major disease or stem borer problems for
rice.
5. China has a surplus of rice and so grain security is not an issue
right now.

If disease or stem borers would emerge as a major problem and China had
to increase its imports of rice, our assessment is that MOA would
approve these GM varieties for commercialization despite Greenpeace and
SEPA objections. MOA and MOST leaders both continue to support biotech
research, but MOA supports it as insurance for the future in case there
is a return to grain shortages and imports.

There are a variety of industries who might oppose GM or biofortified
crops because they fear that they would lose money by the introduction
of GM biofortified crops. These would include exporters of non-GM crops
who would have to segregate their crops and test them to assure
consumers of their non-GM status. It could include food companies that
supply vitamin supplements and the materials needed for industrial
fortification, and the companies that actually do the fortification
which might lose some markets to biofortified crops. Some seed companies
who do not feel that they could compete with GM or with biofortified
varieties might also be concerned.

Many European governments and UN organizations have been very
?precautionary? in their advice to the Chinese government and some have
been actively opposed to Chinese approval of GM technology.

The Technical Options Most Likely to Find Local Acceptance
It seems clear that, at the moment, GM biofortified varieties of major
food grains would have a tough time making it through the biosafety
regulatory process and then through the political process to obtain
permission to be grown commercially. The Biosafety Committee will
require several years of food safety and environmental field trials even
if the Golden Rice genes, for example, come with an extensive portfolio
of food safety research results from the United States and Europe. The
gene and the varieties containing it will come under extensive attack
from Greenpeace, which will make both the regulators and political
leaders very cautious about approving it for cultivation.

In contrast, non-GM biofortification does not have the same problems of
going through the biosafety regulations and facing political concerns of
the government. In theory, biofortified crops would be regulated by the
food fortification and crop variety laws. All new crop varieties have to
be tested by the Ministry of Agriculture or provincial agricultural
bureaus for improved agronomic traits such as yield and resistance to
major pests and diseases. Health foods and industrially fortified foods
are reviewed under legal regulations administered by the Ministry of
Health (MOH). Biofortified foods from varieties made through
conventional plant breeding could be introduced by MOA without needing
MOH approval. MOH approval will probably be required if a government
subsidy would be needed to motivate farmers to grow the variety because
the variety has yields that are equal to or less than traditional
cultivars. MOH approval might also be required if the Ministry of Food
takes on the role of purchasing and distributing biofortified grain to
the poor.

The failure of biofortified varieties to achieve improved agronomic
traits, better taste, and better cooking quality would imperil approval
from the national and/or provincial variety testing system. Even if
biofortified varieties with little agronomic improvement are approved,
it will be very difficult to promote farmer acceptance of them.
Therefore, biofortified varieties that are higher yielding with good
quality and are non-GM are the most promising technical option.

Strategies for Promoting GM and Conventional Biofortification in China
The absence of controversy about industrial fortification and the
government?s support of fortification and the distribution of vitamin
supplements show that there is political support for the concept of
fortification. This suggests that the government and people of China are
also likely to support and accept biofortification, particularly if it
is non-GM and if there is clear evidence that malnourished rural people
will benefit.

The political controversies around GM crops show that policy makers
generally make their decisions on the basis of what they perceive to be
beneficial for large numbers of farmers and consumers as well as the
power of certain special interest groups. The political controversies
and non-controversies around GM tobacco, cotton, and imported GM
commodities described above show that when there is a clear economic
benefit for Chinese farmers, Chinese seed companies, and Chinese
processing companies, new technologies can be quickly passed through the
regulatory system and will continue to be supported by the government
even if there is some criticism from organizations like Greenpeace. If
there are major potential export losses, the technology can be
withdrawn. However, if the main beneficiary of the technology would be
foreign biotech or seed companies, the government is willing to slow the
spread of the technology to farmers. The approval of imported GM
oilseeds and feedgrains also shows that the government takes a practical
approach to these issues. In this case, it solved urban consumers demand
for inexpensive cooking oil by approving imports of GM soybeans and
canola while trying to reduce consumer concerns by introducing GM
labeling. Consumers are buying the labeled GM cooking oil with little
measurable concern about food safety effects.

In the controversy over GM rice, concerns about food safety and
environmental impacts and the role Greenpeace and SEPA have played a
large role in decision-making. Even in this case, however, it still
seems likely that a combination of real need for more rice production,
more attractive rice varieties, more scientific evidence of the food
safety of GM rice, and more active promotion of this technology by the
government could lead to the approval and acceptance of GM rice.

If MOA decides to promote non-GM biofortification, it has several
options. First, the MOA would need to develop some well-documented
success stories which show that biofortification can really work to
reduce micronutrient deficiencies. If the MOA agencies need support to
do this, outside funders could provide support through HarvestPlus or
directly to Chinese social scientists at universities or government
institutes. This would then become the foundation of an effort led by
MOA, or perhaps MOST, to build a coalition of ministries that would have
biofortification as the rural part of an overall strategy for reducing
micronutrient deficiencies. Second, international foundations that fund
organizations like Micronutrient Initiative-China, GAIN China,
HarvestPlus China, and the Golden Rice research could encourage their
Chinese grantees to work toward an integrated program of industrial
fortification, supplements, and biofortification to reduce micronutrient
deficiencies. Third, these grantees could then encourage organizations
like UNICEF and the World Bank to finance programs and encourage Chinese
government agencies who currently work on fortification and supplements
to include biofortification as one of their tools for reducing
malnutrition.

If the government decides to promote GM biofortification, its options
include a program to develop appropriate technology. First, they need to
finance research to develop GM products that are attractive to
farmers?high yields, high-quality grain, and resistance to biotic and
abiotic stress?and with traits that are attractive to the consumers and
the Chinese elite, particularly the top bureaucrats in MOA, MOH, and
SEPA, and consumers more generally. These bureaucrats want some of the
same things that appeal to consumers in the United States and Europe,
such as Omega 3, healthy vegetable oil, and healthy vegetables. The
development of this technology could be encouraged by a well-publicized
prize or competitive research and development program to give government
research institutions the incentives to develop and commercialize
transgenic crops?especially those with improved nutrient content.
Publicity for these prizes or the research funding may be needed to show
Chinese scientists that there still is national and international
support for GM biofortified crops. The program would be open to public
research organizations and private corporations. Public-private
collaborative research programs would be encouraged, including
collaborative proposals that incorporated leading multinational
companies and Chinese public research institutes.

A second program in addition to developing attractive GM technology
would also be needed if GM biofortified crops are to succeed. The
government would have to develop a more visible and transparent
biosafety regulatory system for GM crops. This would include more
research on GM rice food safety in particular, with publication of the
results in refereed academic journals and publicity concerning the
results; public education to convey that GM crops are tested for food
safety and environmental impact; and education/risk communication about
benefits of GM crops. Research in China has shown that few people know
that a biosafety regulatory system exists, but as they learn of the
system, they have more confidence in the safety of these crops (Zhang,
2004).

References
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www.checkbiotech.org