The Poor, Malnutrition, Biofortification, and Biotechnology - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 160

reasons of consumer acceptance and to avoid regulatory problems (see next section);
the work in Latin America is carried out in collaboration with AgroSalud (2011).
Another group of projects is funded by the Grand Challenges in Global Health pro-
gram of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. These projects rely on genetic engineer-
ing, not least because for some crop-micronutrient combinations, biofortification is
not possible otherwise (see Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation 2011a, 2011b). The crops
targeted in these projects are rice, cassava, sorghum, and bananas, which are bred for
higher contents of iron, zinc, provitamin A, and vitamin E, but also protein. These proj-
ects are the Golden Rice Project (Golden Rice Project 2011, IRRI 2011a), the BioCassava
Plus Project (Sayre et al. 2011, BioCassava 2011), the Africa Biofortified Sorghum Project
(ABS 2010) and the Better Bananas for Africa Project (QUT 2011). It is foreseen that
Golden Rice will be released to farmers for the first time in 2013 in the Philippines (IRRI
2011a). The BioCassava Plus Project received funding for its second Phase in April 2011
and will not be available to farmers before 2016 (BioCassava 2011); the other Grand
Challenges crops are further away from dissemination.
In addition to these bigger projects there is also the INSTAPA (2011) project, which
focuses, inter alia, on the potential of biofortified millet, sorghum, maize, and cassava
in complementary food for young children in sub-Saharan Africa to prevent deficien-
cies of iron, zinc, and vitamin A. There are also two smaller projects on biofortification
of cereals through fertilization (with zinc, selenium, and calcium) at the University of
Nottingham and Sabanci University in Istanbul (Bagels 2008; HarvestZinc 2011).
Political Controversies
So far in this chapter, biofortified crops were differentiated into conventionally bred and
genetically engineered ones. This was for a reason: While plant breeders tend to view
genetic engineering and other approaches of modern biotechnology simply as one tool
in their toolbox, and while the scientific consensus is that genetic engineering per se is
not more risky than conventional breeding, in parts of society genetic engineering is
much more of a controversial issue (e.g., Economist 2011; New York Times 2011; Guardian
2011).9
To what extent genetically modified (GM) crops are indeed a matter of concern for the
greater public is not fully established, since consumer surveys are relatively scarce, and
because they are methodologically so diverse as to preclude generalizations (Smale et al.
2009). In developed countries, consumer acceptance studies indicate that consumers
have a greater willingness to pay for food products that are free of GM crops, but results
vary between countries, consumers, their knowledge about genetic engineering, and the
type of food or the GM crop (Qaim 2009). Yet, even in Europe, where acceptance of GM
crops is usually considered to be low, only 8 percent of the respondents in the European
Commission's “Eurobarometer” survey stated that they would be concerned about GM
foods when asked an open question about food-related risks (European Commission