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.
Honey bees could be shielded by probiotics from toxic effects of pesticide exposure, study finds
In a new study from Lawson Health Research Institute and Western University, researchers have shown that probiotics can potentially protect ...
Marion Nestle: ‘GMO propaganda’ film Food Evolution quoted me ‘out of context’
[Editor's note: Marion Nestle is a professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University. She is featured ...
‘Billion-dollar pest’: EPA approves first ‘gene-silenced’ insect-resistant RNAi crops
EPA recently registered four products containing a new and innovative plant-incorporated protectant (PIP) called SMARTSTAX PRO that will help U.S ...
Report: Australia’s GM canola, cotton have been boon for farmers, environment
Genetically Modified (GM) crops have generated significant environmental improvements over the past 20 years in Australia and 25 other countries ...
Environmental Defense Fund: Sustainable farming, feeding growing population require biotechnology
It is critical that humanity meet the food needs of a growing population and relieve the increasing pressures on natural ...
CRISPR-edited algae with high biofuel yield created by ExxonMobil, Craig Venter’s Synthetic Genomics
La Jolla [California’s] Synthetic Genomics and oil giant ExxonMobil say they have created an oil-rich strain of algae that represents ...
US will fight ‘non-science-based’ overseas regulations that restrict GMO exports, says trade representative
The Trump administration will attack overseas regulations that restrict the export of GMO crops and other products resulting from American technological ...
Proposed US rules on gene-edited crops, animals could hamper technology’s potential
US regulatory agencies have proposed guidelines and draft regulations that suggest they may subject gene-edited crops and livestock to the ...
Nina Fedoroff: USDA, FDA proposals intended to streamline biotech crop regulations don’t offer needed relief
[Editor's note: Nina Fedoroff is an American molecular biologist. She was awarded the National Medal of Science in 2007 and served ...
Pro-GMO vegans? Online community champions biotechnology, science literacy
[Andrea] Palmieri, who now leads the March Against Myths, is a bit of a contradiction. In fact, she was once told ...
Opinion: Celebrities, environmental activist groups should stop shaming parents into avoiding GMOs
The Environmental Media Association has teamed up with the organic dairy farm Clover Sonoma to celebrate Dairy Month in an ...
Organic industry-funded anti-GMO group US Right to Know calls Food Evolution film ‘chemical industry propaganda’
[Editor's note: Stacy Malkan is co-director of US Right to Know. Read the GLP's profile of USRTK here.] Some industry messaging ...
Better tasting cantaloupe: Wal-Mart teams with Bayer to breed hardier fruit
Wal-Mart says it typically sells 10 times more cantaloupes in June, when it can buy from U.S. farms, than it ...
Ecuador passes law allowing GMO crop research
[Editor's note: The following article has been translated from Spanish.] Ecuador has approved a law allowing the entry of genetically ...
10,000 times more pesticides ‘naturally’ in plants than synthetic residue on food
The word pesticide is misunderstood, nearly to the same extent as the word chemical. People have been led to believe, ...
US farmers skeptical of organic industry ‘task force’ cracking down on fraudulent imports
[May 2017], The Post reported that three enormous shipments of “organic” corn and soybeans - large enough to constitute a ...
Future of corn: Genetics could improve maize’s sustainability and productivity
A new, much more detailed reference genome for maize, or corn, as it is called in the U.S., [was] published ...
Scientists criticize IARC for withholding data showing glyphosate herbicide does not cause cancer
According to a new Reuters investigation, Aaron Blair, the scientist who led IARC's [the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a ...
WHO’s IARC: Why we did not consider evidence glyphosate herbicide is safe
[Editor's note: Read the GLP's coverage of the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the Reuters article.] The IARC Secretariat ...
Lesson from BPA: Banning glyphosate herbicide won’t make us safer
For years, opponents of glyphosate have argued the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup is harmful for your health. ...
‘Wake up call’: Farm animal overuse drives jump in antibiotic-resistance genes
Eighteen months ago, a gene that confers resistance to colistin — known as an ‘antibiotic of last resort’ — emerged ...
Should milk from cows that eat genetically modified feed be labeled GMO?
[A] woman in California is suing Chipotle because it advertises a GMO- free menu, while serving meat, cheese and sour ...
Will GMO-wary public embrace gene-edited food crops? ‘It’s more social science than science’
Green stalks have only just begun to sprout in the test fields where biotech giant DuPont Pioneer is planting rows ...
Glyphosate herbicide ban could cost UK farmers $1.2 billion, reduce tax revenue
New figures show the potentially devastating impact of a ban on glyphosate to the British economy and the agricultural sector, ...
Video: Missouri farmer creatively complies with ‘ridiculous’ requirement to destroy GE petunias
Blake Hurst, a greenhouse grower in Northwest Missouri and president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, recently received a letter telling him ...
Should the government have ordered the destruction of harmless and beautiful ‘illegal’ GMO petunias?
Sometimes government regulators do things that are not merely misguided but gratuitously stupid. A classic example came [May 2017], when ...
High yield gene-edited rice: Field trials begin in Japan
A food research body [in Japan] has started growing genome-edited rice plants outdoors on a trial basis for the first ...
