What has blind-sided the agribusiness companies is that the fight has been a battle of the brands, as much as one of warring scientific studies. In the United States and Canada, environmentalists have set their sights on Kellogg and Campbell Soup, parodying their carefully nurtured logos and costly ad campaigns. Until now, the agribusiness companies have had great difficulty responding. Even if they could claim that their altered foods had no harmful effects, they couldn't point to direct nutritional benefits, either. Which is where golden rice comes in.
Golden rice has all the feel-good ingredients of a strong brand.
First, it's golden, as in golden retrievers and gold cards and golden sunsets. Second, unlike other genetically engineered foods, it isn't spliced with ghastly fish genes, but rather melded with sunny daffodils. But before we embrace genetic engineering as the saviour of the world's poor, it seems wise to sort out what problem is being solved here. What we lack is the political will to mobilize those resources. That was the clear message that emerged last month from the Group of Eight summit in Okinawa.