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.
Innocent victims: The GMO ‘petunia carnage’ of 2017
[In 2015], plant biologist Teemu Teeri was walking by a train station in Helsinki when he noticed some vivid orange petunias ...
GM non-bruising potatoes won’t be grown commercially in Canada this year
There will be no commercially grown GMO potatoes on Prince Edward Island [in 2017], according to Simplot Plant Sciences, the ...
GM corn and cotton varieties developed by Kenyan scientists ready for field trials
Kenyan scientists have used modern biotechnology to develop two crop varieties that are expected to be released in the country ...
Video: Food Evolution—Neil deGrasse Tyson-narrated documentary on GMO debate—set for June 23 release
Food Evolution aims to take a look at the science underlying the heated rhetoric of the GMO debate. Filmmaker Scott ...
Diet and land: Why organic farming is ‘less sustainable’ than conventional
[Editor's note: Steven Novella is an academic clinical neurologist at Yale University School of Medicine.] Perhaps the biggest problem with ...
‘Uncertainty and fear’: Why GE vitamin-A fortified ‘Golden Rice’ has been slow to catch on
Vitamin-A deficiency around the world leads to between 250,000 and 500,000 children going blind – every single year. Half of ...
South Africa expects record GMO corn harvest this season
[Editor's note: More than 70% of corn grown in South Africa is genetically modified. So far, South Africa is the ...
‘Doomsday’ arctic seed vault ‘flooded’ because of global warming? Not so fast
A failure at a fail-safe vault. The irony is delicious, but that’s not the whole story. On its website, the ...
Flower power: Decoded sunflower genome could unlock increased oil, stress tolerance
Take that, sunflowers. The convoluted genetic code that has thwarted scientists for so long has finally been cracked. Scientists published ...
After labeling bill fails in Canada, GMO critics press retailers not to sell GM foods
Members of the Canadian Parliament voted against approving mandatory labeling of genetically modified [GMO] foods in a vote on May ...
Mary-Dell Chilton: 78-year-old ‘mother of genetic modification’ still innovating
[Mary-Dell] Chilton...led a collaborative research study at Washington University in St. Louis, and although GMO tobacco was never commercialized, it ...
Microbiologist, former Greenpeace supporter: Opposition to GMOs ‘responsible for death of poor people’
[Editor's note: The following article has been translated from Dutch and lightly edited for clarity.] [Editor's note: Hidde Boersma is ...
5 reasons why it’s so hard to know whether ‘organic’ food is really organic
Regulating [food] supply chains to ensure, for example, that “organic” foods deserve their labels is hard. Here are five reasons ...
Non-browning GM Arctic Apple set for fall consumer launch
The company behind the non-browning Arctic Apple is gearing up for its commercial launch with U.S. retailers this fall, following ...
Neonicotinoid corn seed treatments likely ‘far exceed demonstrable need’, study says
Nearly every foraging honey bee in the state of Indiana will encounter neonicotinoids during corn planting season, and the common ...
Video: How are CRISPR crops regulated differently than GMOs?
Critics say the Obama Administration balked on an opportunity to update Reagan-era guidelines on how agencies like the Department of ...
Black market GM cotton seeds flood Chinese market, cutting pesticide use and boosting yields
China is one of the world’s top cotton producers partly because of a widespread sowing of banned seeds, according to ...
To revive monarch butterflies, plant milkweed in yards and on wild lands, study says
If Monarch butterflies are going to stay off the endangered species list, they need more to eat. And it’s up ...
Anti-pesticide, anti-nuclear activist named France’s new environment minister
The new French president stunned businesses by appointing Nicolas Hulot, an anti-nuclear and anti-pesticide environmental activist, as the country's environmental ...
Video: Watch out, Gwyneth Paltrow, 5 pro-science moms combat GMO misinformation
In 2015, a group of bloggers wrote an open letter to celebrity moms Gwyneth Paltrow, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ginnifer Goodwin—criticizing ...
Plants vs pathogens: CRISPR-created crops fend off pests, add nutrition
Potato blight sparked the Irish famine in the 19th century, causing a million people to starve to death and another ...
India’s agriculture ministry has ‘no reservations about promoting GM mustard’
The agriculture ministry ... said it has no reservations about GM mustard, which has been cleared by an expert panel ...
China lobbies public on GMOs as ChemChina’s takeover of Syngenta nears approval
China will carry out a nationwide poll [June 2017] to test the public’s acceptance of genetically-modified food, a technology the ...
‘Inextricably linked’ anti-vaccine and anti-GMO movements cause preventable suffering
[Editor's note: Read the GLP's recent coverage of the Organic Consumers Association's and other anti-GMO groups' links to the anti-vaccine ...
Infographic: India poised to dramatically increase its global GMO footprint
GM crop footprint in India is all set to grow once the government gives its final nod to GM Mustard, ...
Maine approves 3 genetically engineered blight resistant potatoes that reduce pesticide use
With little fanfare, the Maine Board of Pesticides Control unanimously approved ... the registration of three new types of genetically ...
GMO-free top labeling issue for 13% of consumers
In recent years, public awareness campaigns have aimed to inform consumers of the presence of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), but ...
