This humanitarian gesture may simply be a cosmetic tool to repair the damaged image of agrochemical firms and arrest the mounting opposition to bio-engineered crops whose safety and corporate owners are increasingly being questioned in many parts of the world. The license waiver to the South is, in fact, a subsidy when under the WTO agreements, governments are supposed to be reducing subsidies to agricultural production and trade. It could facilitate interference of the agrochemical firm in developing countries' biosafety regimes. Nobody really asked the local people what they thought about this rice and whether they wanted it, free or otherwise. Vitamin A-rich crops abound in the rural areas.
Malnutrition is rooted more in poverty environmental degradation and social disparity.
In that respect, golden rice does not address the cause of the problem. For millions of people in Asia, rice is not just a daily source of calories, it is also a link to their culture and heritage. Going back centuries, the methods by which Asian farmer's plant, harvest and process rice have remained the same. Present indigenous and local varieties have been the product of countless centuries of breeding and selection by farmers to produce rice suitable to their environment and needs. There has to be a way to sterilize the plant and then to cross it with a fertile rice plant.