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.
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 ...
To feed 1.4 billion people China technologizing its agriculture sector–Will it be enough?
China’s 1.4 billion people are building up an appetite that is changing the way the world grows and sells food ...
New GE rice variety boosts plant’s immune system to fight multiple diseases at once
Plants don’t have a bloodstream to circulate immune cells. Instead, they use receptors on the outsides of their cells to ...
Mimicking gene changes in mutant cherry tomatoes can nearly double production
Plant geneticists have figured out how to almost double the production of garden tomatoes. Though most of us care mainly ...
GMO rescue of American chestnut tree may take longer than anticipated
The nearly century-old effort to employ selective breeding to rescue the American chestnut, which has been rendered functionally extinct by ...
Americans pay less attention to ‘organic’ and ‘GMO’ in weighing food health benefits, survey finds
Determining what exactly is a "healthy" food has us all scratching our heads. A new survey suggests that most Americans ...
Less milkweed due to herbicide likely contributed to early monarch butterfly declines, study finds
[Monarch butterfly] numbers ... are shrinking. New research at Michigan State University, published in the current issue of the journal ...
Democrats accuse Trump of turning USDA into ‘pro-industry advertising business’ in support of GMOs
[T]he Department of Agriculture under President Trump is throwing its weight behind genetically modified foods with a new GMO-friendly information ...
Fate of approval of India’s first GMO food crop—mustard—unsure after sudden death of environment minister
Union Minister for Science and Technology Dr Harsh Vardhan was, ... given an additional charge of the Environment Ministry after ...
Plants that ‘fertilize themselves’? Gene discovery could lead to reductions in synthetic fertilizer use
The lessons of plant diversity and competition learned from a clover patch, which are featured in a special issue of ...
Mandatory GMO labeling of foods overwhelmingly defeated in Canadian Parliament
Members of the Canadian Parliament voted against approving mandatory labeling of genetically modified [GMO] foods in a vote in the ...
Hype and agroecology: Is ‘low input’ farming better for the environment and economy?
[Editor's note: Henry Miller, physician and molecular biologist, is a fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University’s ...
What would Whole Foods look like if it were ‘science-based’?
[Editor’s note: Jenny Splitter is a writer, storyteller and mother of two.] Whole Foods used to be my idea of ...
Feeding the world: Will GMO seeds rescue yields as global climates dry and heat up?
Take the argument that more heat- and drought-resistant seeds are what’s needed to cope with climate change. The good people ...
Why GMOs face tough go in China despite huge imports and successful crops
[Editor’s note: Mark Lynas is an author and journalist who reports on crop biotechnology around the world.] Sometimes I hear ...
Israel will not require additional regulations for gene-edited plants
Danziger Innovations announces that the Israeli National Committee for Transgenic Plants (NCTP) has made yet another major step in regulating ...
US flower sellers forced to destroy 9 varieties of petunias after tests show they’re genetically modified
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced [May 16] that U.S. flower distributors have begun to destroy countless petunia plants ...
India’s first approval of GMO food—mustard—could open door to over 100 GE food products
After many ifs and buts, the commercial release of genetically modified (GM) mustard seems to have reached a decisive phase ...
China agrees to evaluate 8 GMO crops in trade deal with US, ending long delay
China's promise to evaluate eight varieties of U.S. genetically modified crops by the end of [May 2017] under a trade ...
GLP’s Jon Entine: Gene editing will cut time, costs of commercializing new genetically engineered crops
Monsanto, the world’s largest producer of GMO seeds, is betting that a new technology called gene editing may calm consumers ...
EU to propose 10-year extension of glyphosate herbicide
The European Commission will propose extending by 10 years its approval for weed-killer glyphosate, used in Monsanto's Roundup, a spokeswoman ...
Pink GM pineapple with high levels of antioxidants unlikely to boost human health
[Editor's note: Layla Katiraee is a scientist with a PhD in Molecular Genetics.] A couple of months ago, I saw ...
Plaintiffs suing Monsanto over alleged carcinogenicity of herbicide glyphosate say EPA colluded with company
For 12 years, [Christine] Sheppard had no idea what might have caused her non-Hodgkin's lymphoma -- until a group of ...
Has ‘big data’ lived up to its promise to revolutionize farming?
For farmers—and the tech companies that want them as customers—data has been a disappointment. A few years ago, the agricultural ...
Canadian parliament voting on mandatory GMO food label
Members of the Canadian Parliament will decide whether to approve mandatory labeling of genetically modified foods in a vote in ...
