Soylent Rice

You are what you eat.

The first [genetically modified] food crop containing human genes is set to be approved for commercial production.

The laboratory-created rice produces some of the human proteins found in breast milk and saliva.

Its U.S. developers say they could be used to treat children with diarrhoea, a major killer in the Third World.

The rice is a major step in so-called Frankenstein Foods, the first mingling of human-origin genes and those from plants.

Sensationalist worrywarts and alarmist hand-wringers, take your marks...

GeneWatch UK, which monitors new GM foods, described it as "very disturbing". Researcher Becky Price warned: "There are huge, huge health risks and people should rightly be concerned about this."

Friends of the Earth campaigner Clare Oxborrow said: "Using food crops and fields as glorified drug factories is a very worrying development.

"If these pharmaceutical crops end up on consumers' plates, the consequences for our health could be devastating.

"The biotech industry has already failed to prevent experimental GM rice contaminating the food chain.

"The Government must urge the U.S. to ban the production of drugs in food crops. It must also introduce tough measures to prevent illegal GM crops contaminating our food and ensure that biotech companies are liable for any damage their products cause."

Which is worse - having to pace around fretting about something being "very disturbing" simply because it's new and unfamiliar or allowing third world kids to succumb to deadly diarrhea?  So long as the people who get paid to study such things dispassionately find it safe, that speaks a lot louder to me than the bombast of a few activist groups.

Now the USDA, saying the rice poses "virtually no risk". has given preliminary approval for it to be grown in Kansas, which has no commercial rice farms.