CROPS DONATED TO DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Listen to the full interview with Hayden Parry One of the world's leading bio-science companies has agreed an unusual deal that will give farmers in developing countries free access to a new healthy strain of rice, which encourages the body to produce vitamin A. Astra Zeneca is to sell the new generation of genetically-modified food on a commercial basis in the rich Western world, while poor developing countries will get the technology without charge. Hayden Parry, general manager of the agricultural biotech arm of Astra Zeneca, claims the new strain of rice could bring huge health benefits to developing countries, where many people suffer a chronic deficiency of vitamin A. He spoke to our South Asia editor Mark Gregory: "Over half-a-million children a year in the developing world go irreversibly blind because they don’t have sufficient vitamin A and vitamin A in general is in deficiency in over 100 million people." Mark Gregory asked Hayden Parry why they had the policy of giving this strain of rice free to developing countries while charging commercial prices in the rich western world? “We should give credit to the inventors - they both made the technological breakthrough and also made a commitment that this technology should go free to the developing world. They appreciated, as inventors, as individuals, that they lacked the capabilities and resources to get it to the people who really needed it most, and they eventually selected Zeneca to help them get to this position where this rice could be made freely available." Was this however, asked Mark Gregory, a way of mollifying criticism about genetically modified food, by giving people in the developing world a bit of a break? “This is the first time we, as a company, have gone into a collaboration to help get somebody else’s technology into the developing world - but we have actually given our own technology away in two or three cases to the developing world free of charge in a very similar fashion”. We also believe that golden rice fits very nicely into the growing functional food market. By functional food, I mean food which has a health benefit. Hayden Parry