Daily Food & Ag 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.
Convenience – not sustainability – is major driving factor behind US consumer food purchases, study finds
[An] American Food Journey report sheds light on a long-standing knowledge gap between producers and consumers around their expectations for food. It ...
Top EU court upholds partial ban on 3 neonicotinoid pesticides, in bid to halt alleged honeybee losses
The European Union’s top court on [May 6] upheld the EU’s partial ban on three insecticides linked to harming bees, ...
China to restrict reliance on foreign seed companies to foster lagging innovation in genetic engineering and advanced breeding
China will encourage technological innovation to boost domestic supplies of high-quality seeds, dubbed "agriculture microchips," officials said at a seed ...
Viewpoint — ‘We’re trying to mimic mother nature’: Why healthy soil is key to cutting back on pesticides and growing climate-resilient crops
[Les Seiler and his brother] have been practicing “no-till” farming [in Ohio] for 36 years and counting. That means they ...
Impossible Food’s GM ingredient that gives its meatless burgers their meaty taste upheld as ‘safe’ by federal court, rejecting Center for Food Safety suit
When the Center for Food Safety brought the approval of Impossible Foods' heme ingredient to the federal courts, its reasoning ...
Viewpoint — ‘It is wrong to leave Africans at the mercy of organic farming’: Western activists should not force ‘unproductive agroecology’ on developing farmers
Because of GM technology, crop-protection tools, and more, farmers are growing more food and cotton on less land than ever ...
Viewpoint: ‘Is an ethical diet enough?’ Veganism has become mainstream — but is it really more sustainable?
A vegan diet contains very low amounts of saturated fats and cholesterol, high amounts of micronutrients such as vitamins, minerals, ...
‘It’s simply difficult to grow crops organically, on a large scale’: Gigantic organic farm failure in South Dakota underscores challenge of scaling up production
The food company General Mills, maker of Cheerios, announced in 2018 that it would convert [Gunsmoke Farms, located northwest of Pierre, ...
A race against time: One biologist’s mission to ‘fight climate change with plant genetics’ before her Parkinson’s disease advances
People needed to find new ways to grow plants — and soon. The scientist’s urgency came not only from what ...
‘If cats and dogs made up their own country, they would rank fifth in meat consumption.’ Cell-based meat poised to cut pet food industry’s carbon footprint
If cats and dogs made up their own country, they would rank fifth in terms of meat consumption, according to ...
Over 2,000 Nigerian farmers ready to grow GM cowpea this year
More than 2,000 Nigerian farmers are planning to plant Bt cowpea, the country’s first genetically modified food crop, in July ...
In ‘urgent plea’ for organic farming to allow biotechnology, researchers say Europe’s Farm to Fork program ‘will likely fail’ without it
An international research team, including scientists from Wageningen University & Research [WUR] in the Netherlands, says that unless the EU ...
Viewpoint: ‘Feel-good purchases’: This farmer believes the ‘regenerative agriculture movement’ is the latest fad promoting misconceptions about conventional farming
The public’s fascination with regenerative agriculture is relatively new. But many people seem to think it’s a way to “fix” ...
Viewpoint: ‘Genetically modified crops are not deadly mutants produced in a lab. Consider them pest-resistant, famine-fighting Avengers’
The wild version of the banana plant had inedible fruit filled with tons of seeds. Humans have, through a meticulous ...
Podcast: Pig and cow organs for human transplant? From valves to tendons, xenotransplanted animal parts are common, but so is rejection due to alpha gal meat allergies. Gene-altered pigs could change that
[A recent] episode covered Alpha Gal Syndrome, the tick-induced allergy to beef and pork. The same immunological response could also ...
‘Alternative proteins doesn’t mean adopting a vegan diet’: A vegan makes the case for the meatless meat revolution
About a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions are traceable to the food supply chain. Animal agriculture accounts for about three-quarters of those emissions ...
Viewpoint: Why technology alone cannot solve world hunger and food insecurity
Among technologies expected to aid the production of more and safer food in the future are cultured meat, precision agriculture, ...
Viewpoint: ‘Deep structural flaws’ plague Nigeria’s food system: ‘Gene-editing and the use of genetically modified organisms need to be mobilized’
During the lockdown in Lagos, Nigeria, I joined a humanitarian team to distribute food to poor people in the urban ...
Coffee is good for you. There are dozens of carcinogens in coffee. What are the real facts about whether coffee is healthy or not?
Moderate coffee intake is linked to a lower likelihood of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, liver and endometrial cancers, Parkinson’s disease and depression. ... For years, researchers linked ...
Viewpoint: ‘Regenerate or die?’ Fashion industry co-opts sustainability buzzwords like ‘regenerative’ and ‘circular’ — but what do they really mean?
The North Face and Patagonia now tout clothing made of regenerative cotton. And Secteur 6, a new Indian-American brand that ...
Viewpoint: Higher food prices, increased food insecurity, trade impacts? The EU’s Farm to Fork strategy has devastating potential outcomes
A recent study by the USDA Economic Research Service shows potential negative impacts to the global market if the European ...
Robotic farming: How artificial intelligence (AI) is taking precision farming to another level
Labor costs, climate change and growing food demand are ushering in an era of machine modernization across the nation’s agricultural ...
Florida Atlantic salmon? Recirculating aquaculture systems without antibodies or vaccinations poised to spur boom in in-land fish farming
In a series of indoor tanks 40 miles south west of Miami, Florida, five million fish are swimming in circles ...
‘Little crop of horrors’? Genes harvested from carnivorous plants and genetically engineered into tomatoes and other crops could fend off pests
They won’t devour insects with leafy jaws, but with help from carnivorous plant genes, tomatoes, tobacco and other crops could ...
Some Florida Key residents incensed about pending release of Zika- and malaria-stopping GMO mosquitoes, but others believe cutting-edge science will help control health menace
Oxitec will release half a billion gene-hacked mosquitoes, engineered to kill off the local bloodsucker population along a lengthy swathe ...
‘Current GMO legislation not fit for innovative technologies’: European Commission calls for revamp of agricultural biotechnology rules to allow gene editing, promote sustainable farming
The European Commission published, at the request of the Council, a study on New Genomic Techniques (NGTs). The study shows ...
Viewpoint: Genetically modified mosquito release ‘represents the best of what public-private collaborations can do’
10 years after the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District (FKMCD) first invited Oxitec to the Keys, and in efforts to ...
