PH farmers, foreign groups stage joint protest over ‘Golden Rice’

MORE than 100 people gathered in front of the Department of Agriculture (DA) Central Office in Quezon City on Wednesday as part of an international campaign against the feed and field testing of a rice variety in the country.

Farmer groups from Nueva Ecija, Nueva Vizcaya, Bicol, Quezon and Cordillera and the “Stop Golden Rice Network,” a broad alliance of more than 30 organizations from India Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan and Indonesia, along with representatives from China, Australia and New Zealand, staged the protest against a move by the DA to conduct nationwide feed and field testing of Golden Rice, said Marcelino de la Rosa, spokesman of RESIST! Agri-TNC Network-Philippines.