Daily Food & Agriculture Digest
Every day, the staff of the Genetic Literacy Project scours the Web for stories on a range of agricultural and food issues, including the GMO debate, conventional and organic farming, regulations, new breeding technologies and sustainability. We publish excerpts of those stories and encourage our readers to visit the original publications for the complete stories.
Forget weather, seed helicopters can predict maple syrup production
Eyeing the weather to understand spring sugar yields has been a rule of thumb but a new paper provides a ...
Cameroon on path to introduce GMO Bt cotton
Cameroon is poised to become the tenth country to grow GMO cotton--a cotton variety modified to express the natural insecticide, the bacterium ...
Got GMO milk?
Bioengineers in the US are developing the world’s first artificial cow's milk made from genetically engineered yeast in an effort ...
Golden Rice faces ideological and technical hurdles
In south and southeast Asian nations such as India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and the Philippines, rice is the primary food source, ...
Open letter: Slow to adopt GM crops, Europe becoming ag backwater
More than twenty of Europe's most prominent scientists issued a joint letter making the case for embracing crop biotechnology--or face ...
Pet supplement company claims natural alternative to livestock antibiotics?
Avigen, a 'wellness' company which promotes antioxidant supplements for pets, says it has done what science cannot - they have ...
3 billion malnourished Asians ask Greenpeace: Why deny us vitamin enhanced rice?
Many GMO opponents are targeting the development of Golden Rice--a variation on the Asian staple enhanced with Vitamin A that ...
Indian NGO leader: Don’t lift Indian moratorium on Bt eggplant and other GM crops
The Indian government is currently debating whether to life an 18-month freeze on trials of 13 genetically modified food crops, including the ...
100 percent boost in tomato yields with new genetic toolkit
Tomatoes are some of the most genetically modified foods in history. What were tiny, strangely-shaped fruits the size of a ...
$25 million for “Factor GMO” study—Are the results pre-determined?
What anti-GMO activists are billing as the most expensive and comprehensive longterm study of the impact of GMO crops and ...
Downside to GMOs: Yields have become so good, they exceed processing capacity
Organic food should catapult itself to being a $105 billion industry by next year. Times are good, they have a ...
Vermont Rube Goldberg-like GMO labeling law exempts GMO filled natural supplements
During the 1920s, the cartoonist Rube Goldberg became immensely popular churning out cartoons that depicted devices that performed simple tasks in ...
Why support erodes for GMO labeling (Hint: It’s not because of spending by Big Ag)
As happened in both California and Washington state, what seemed like an easy path to victory for supporters of a ...
Two-faced anti-GMO groups: Block crop and food innovations then claim Big Ag prevents GMO innovations
Thailand appears poised to move ahead with growing test plots of a genetically modified papaya, modeled after the GMO Hawaiian papaya, ...
Agricultural science is back in fashion for college students: Here’s why
Michigan State University is reporting something this fall that hasn't been the case for 40 years: Agriculture is back, and ...
Kenya paying steep price for precipitous ban on GMO
In 2011, Kenya was poised to enter the club of GMO growing nations when the National Biosafety Authority affirmed the safety ...
Battle of Britain: NGOs and scientists clash over proposal to loosen EU GMO restrictions
Britain has emerged as the key battleground that could determine whether the European Union relaxes its tight restrictions on GMOs ...
Consumers will pay more to avoid GMOs–If labeling is mandatory rather than voluntary
Will consumers pay more to avoid GMOs and if so, how much? Apparently it depends in part on whether labeling ...
Cropland expansion in China has led to dramatic rise in carbon emissions
Over the last 300 years, the population of China has expanded and so has cropland to feed her people. To ...
Challenging tired arguments against GMOs
Steven Novella of the New England Skeptical Society has a thoughtful and entertaining piece on his Neurologica blog on the seven ...
Two Oregon papers join most others in urging “no” on mandatory GMO label vote
Two more Oregon papers, both conservative leaning, are urging votes to reject the Oregon GMO labelling initiative. Most of the ...
One week before vote, Oregon GMO labeling law appears headed for defeat
Following a similar script from California and Washington state, support for the mandatory GMO labeling initiative is losing support as ...
Scientists rebuff Center for Food Safety report alleging chemicals in infant soy milk
Just days before the mandatory labeling votes in Oregon and Colorado, the anti-GMO activist group Center for Food Safety injected ...
Citizen scientists embrace urban agriculture
City life may not seem conducive to agriculture but all across America, citizen scientists are learning about the latest methods ...
Pest odor science is a citrus disease cure environmentalists can embrace
The Asian citrus psyllid carrying the huanglongbing bacterium is a devastating combination vector that causes a lethal citrus disease which is a threat ...
Anti-GMO forces leveraging September Montana GE wheat find
Last July, the Agriculture Department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service found unapproved GMO wheat at Montana State University. The government ...
Can we ever have a civil debate about GMOs?
Every few years, it seems, there is a hot button issue that divides people in a way that goes far ...
