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.
Judge dismisses activist lawsuit to block GMO crop, pesticide use in wildlife refuges
Conservation groups failed to show they would be harmed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s reversal of a previous ...
Novel resistant genes for late blight, disease behind 1840s Irish Potato Famine, discovered
Late blight, the most important and most destructive pathogen of potato, was caused by the microorganism Phytophthora infestans. Late blight is ...
Viewpoint: ‘GMOs change your DNA’ and 7 other anti-biotech myths debunked
There are quite a bit of misconceptions and myths surrounding that term and what GMOs actually are. But it’s important ...
GMO barley could help produce key lab-grown meat ingredient
Using abundant geothermal waters for heating and volcanic ash instead of soil, biotech company ORF Genetics is growing barley [in ...
Self-limiting ‘Friendly’ technology offers hope for controlling fall armyworm without pesticides
Oxitec, the Oxford University spinoff company that produces environmentally-friendly insect control solutions, [September 24] announced a collaboration with the life ...
Replacing fossil fuels? Gene-edited algae could help cut biodiesel production costs
Hiroshima University researchers developed a highly efficient genome editing system for microalga Nannochloropsis oceanica, which is a potential source of ...
Frustrated by delayed GMO approvals, Indian farmers press forward with illegal insect-resistant eggplant cultivation
The second decade of the 21st century, 2011 to 2020, has turned out to be the lost decade for India, ...
‘Why use dangerous pesticides when GM maize can help us fight fall armyworm?’ Ugandan farmers ask government
Upon learning that one of the ways they could effectively deal with the challenge of the fall armyworm was using ...
Disease-resistant banana genes could accelerate effort to save Cavendish from extinction
Significant progress has been made in accelerating the development of banana varieties with resistance to the Fusarium fungus. Fusarium causes ...
Glyphosate-tainted honey? New Zealand honey industry rejects ‘sensationalized’ coverage of pesticide safety report
The New Zealand honey industry has refuted recent claims of its products being unsafe for consumption in the wake of ...
‘Air-derived protein’? Biotech startups aim to challenge traditional farming with precision fermentation
Feeding the world with protein made from air or industrial exhaust with minimal use of water and land, and without ...
Could lab-grown sushi save rapidly declining fish populations?
[A]according to the Global Aquaculture Alliance, 3.1 billion people around the world now rely on fish and seafood for a ...
Anti-glyphosate cancer plaintiff attorney gets two-year prison sentence for $200 million extortion scheme
A federal judge on [September 18] sentenced Virginia attorney Timothy Litzenburg, 38, to two years in prison for attempting to ...
Webinar: GLP’s Jon Entine, science communicators address agricultural biotechnology misinformation
The Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST) released a new paper, The Importance of Communicating Empirically Based Science for Society. In ...
Burkina Faso renews commitment to GM crops with Bt cowpea
Burkina Faso scientists and farmers say their country has not abandoned crop biotechnology, despite challenges that prompted it to shelve ...
Could food of the future come from ‘microbial protein factories’ instead of plants and animals?
Could a suite of microscopic microbial protein factories (yeast, bacteria, fungi, algae) give plants and animals a run for their ...
Growing GMO crops in national wildlife refuges a boon for the environment, biologists say
The path has been cleared for genetically engineered crops, called GECs, to be used again on national wildlife refuges in ...
Will coffee go extinct? Deadly fungus threatens one of the world’s favorite beverages
In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, talking about a plant disease might seem frivolous. But around the world, 100 ...
CRISPR bacon: Disease-resistant pigs could save pork producers billions of dollars annually
Chinese scientists have produced a pig species that can resist three major infectious diseases plaguing the animal using gene-editing technology, ...
Bees ‘scent trained’ to effectively pollinate sunflowers boost seed production up to 57%
Scientists in Argentina have trained honeybees to more effectively pollinate sunflowers — a method they believe can also be applied ...
Will India approve more GMO crops? ‘Ideological’ regulators could halt progress
The apex regulator of genetically-modified (GM) crops has permitted a Jalna, Maharashtra-based seed company to do confined bio-safety trials on ...
Viewpoint: ‘It’s. Not. The. Cow. Farts.’ Burger King pulls ‘Cows Menu’ climate change ad
You’ve probably seen Burger King’s latest marketing video featuring Wal-Mart yodeler Mason Ramsey singing about methane emissions from cow farts ...
Cheese without the cow: Could bioengineering produce animal-free dairy products?
Australian-US firm Change Foods is creating cheese from scratch using bio-engineering technology, claiming that their products will hold an advantage ...
Should you worry about pesticides in fruits and vegetables? 96.8% of domestic food below legal residue limits, FDA reports
The vast majority of foods sampled for pesticides in the 2018 fiscal year contained residues within EPA tolerances, the Food ...
Trump v Biden: Where do the candidates stand on GMOs and other key food issues?
For the past 40 years, Farm Bureau has asked every presidential candidate to provide responses to issues likely to impact ...
Bayer settles 15,000 more cancer suits, a ‘huge step’ toward ending glyphosate litigation
Bayer AG settled thousands more U.S. lawsuits over its Roundup weed killer after criticism that the company was failing to ...
Neonicotinoid insecticide ban, dry weather threaten Europe’s ‘fragile’ sugar industry
The European Union is heading for a significant drop in sugar output this year after fields were devastated by pests ...
