Does rice really need to be genetically modified?

The Philippine rice terraces, a UNESCO Living Cultural Heritage site, has been declared a genetically-modified organism (GMO) free zone

In the world of food staples, rice has a pretty iconic status. Over half of the global population eat it every day. It has been grown around the world for over 10,000 years. It's cultivated in 113 countries. If rice was a pop group, it would be the Beatles.

As well as being a fairly versatile accompaniment to many more interesting foods, rice is also a key ingredient in a wide variety of processed foods, ranging from baby food to more obvious things like rice noodles.

Of course, it's precisely that iconic status that makes rice a target for the 'If it ain't broke, let's break it' enthusiasm of the genetic engineering corporates. Because if you could cook up a version of rice that was patented to your company, you'd be raking it in.

The German chemical giant Bayer is trying to so just that - it wants to sell a herbicide resistant variety of GE rice to countries for commercial planting. The theory is that it will make it easier to blitz crops with the herbicide glufosinate without killing them. But that just means two things - first, that pesticide use is going to go waaaaay up, and second, that 'conventional rice' - (also known as 'rice') - is at risk of being contaminated by GM strains. Funnily enough, Bayer also manufacture glufosinate, so they'd get to work both ends of the deal quite nicely.

Quite apart from the fact that glufosinate is considered to be so dangerous to humans and the environment that it will soon be banned in Europe, rice traders and producers worldwide have up until this point avoided GM rice, because of high economic risks. The global rice industry lost some 1.2 billion dollars in 2006, when another GEMrice variety from Bayer contaminated global food supplies.

Our colleagues at Greenpeace International are hosting a petition calling on governments to protect consumers, farmers, crops and fields from potential contamination by GM rice.

There are some links with more information here, or you can sign the petition below.

• Find out about GM crops in more detail
• Find out how sustainable rice production can be achieved without genetic engineering
• Read more about Bayer's GM rice

We ask all governments around the world to protect consumers and farmers, their crops and fields by rejecting Bayer’s GE rice, and to stop GE rice field trials.