EUROPE/ITALY - The faculty of Bio-Ethics at the Pontifical College Regina Apostolorum in Rome, has organised a Congress “ The rice of hope. Biotech helps look ahead” to fight underdevelopment and food shortage which cases hundreds of thousands of cases of blindness and other diseases in poor countries

Rome (Fides Service) -The faculty of Bio-Ethics at the Pontifical College Regina Apostolorum in Rome, has organised a Congress “The rice of hope. Biotech helps look ahead”, Wednesday 12 May 2004. Among the special guests, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, President of the Pontifical Council for Pastoral of Health care Workers.
2004 is the international year of rice, basic food for one billion people, and whole alone occupies 11% of the world’s farmland.
Lack of vitamins causes blindness and other diseases, hundreds of thousands of cases in poor countries. Every year 500,000 children go blind for lack of vitamin A. One of the promises of Genetic engineering is that it will enrich traditional food with nutrition principles. Researchers all over the world are trying to find a way to enrich rice with vitamin A.
The best result so far is Vitamin A enriched “Golden rice” named after its colour due to a beta-carotene content.
Produced by Ingo Potrykus of Zurich and Peter Beyer of Friburg, the rice is modified with three jonquil genes and one bacteria gene. Ingo Potrykus has put his discovery at the disposal of developing countries free of charge.
The idea of the Congress is to present and make more widely known the benefits of Golden rice, to overcome underdevelopment and food shortage; evaluate the possibility of employing vegetable biotechnology to increase progress and development of the poorest rural peoples; support research to produce and diffuse vaccines from transgenic plants.
(AP) (7/5/2004 Agenzia Fides; Righe:28; Parole:317)