Research on Golden Rice at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is part of their humanitarian work to reduce vitamin A deficiency, a serious condition of malnutrition mostly affecting women and children by causing sickness and leading, in many cases, to blindness and premature death of millions each year... We the undersigned members of the global scientific community condemn the recent destruction of a Philippine Department of Agriculture’s Golden Rice trial plot in Pili, Camarines Sur organized by Peasant Movement of the Philippines and SIKWAL-GMO.

Fueled by a recent onslaught of disinformation and fear-mongering about plant biotechnology – or perhaps by its continuing successes — extremists engaged in acts of eco-terrorism are back after a ten year hiatus.

The rice seeds stolen by Greenpeace had been genetically improved for insect resistance and were en route from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich to the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. The seeds were to be tested to confirm that they would grow well under field conditions and produce high yields of rice without requiring the usual levels of chemical pesticide. In the Philippines and many developing countries in Asia where rice is a staple food, disease- and insect-resistant rice are desperately needed, but that has not dissuaded Greenpeace from its intractable opposition to GE crops – or from criminality.