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.
Evidence may not matter: Roundup cancer settlements could trigger international pesticide suits regardless of health impacts
Since litigation began a couple years ago, Roundup, a particular brand of glyphosate based pesticide, is now firmly established as ...
European Union suspends some GMO regulations to fast-track COVID-19 vaccine
The EU’s stance on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has been criticized by the Consumer Choice Center, which has labelled it ...
Growing fish in space: Lab-grown tuna could feed astronauts of the future
.... [S]ending items into space is extremely expensive—about $10,000 a pound. Space dwellers will need to find a way to ...
10 things everyone should know about GMOs in Africa
1. Biotechnology, genetic modification, genetic engineering and GMOs are terms for essentially the same process: breeding crops and livestock to ...
Where did strawberries comes from? Genomics, art history help trace evolution of fruits and vegetables
Plant geneticists seeking to understand the history of the plants we eat can decode the genomes of ancient crops from ...
Indian farmers’ union says illegal GMO herbicide-tolerant cotton cultivation continues, despite arrests
Under the new regulated cropping system, farmers in Telangana have grown cotton on 60 lakh acres, setting a new record ...
Viewpoint: Court-ordered dicamba weedkiller ban could fuel new legal strategy to restrict Bayer’s Roundup
On June 3, 2020, a panel of three judges from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San ...
Low-carb diets might help treat Alzheimer’s, ALS—and even cancer?
[T]here is a growing interest in [Ketogenic] extreme high-fat diet among researchers. In 2019 alone, more than a thousand new ...
Lab-made breast milk could ‘spell trouble’ for $45-billion infant formula industry
It won’t be easy to cell-culture breast milk in the lab. But early results are promising enough to spell trouble ...
Why grow GMOs? Over 23 years, biotech crops boosted farm income $225 billion, cut pesticide use and slashed carbon emissions
Farmers who grow biotech crops have earned an additional $225 billion and greatly reduced agriculture's contribution to climate change, according ...
Pesticide fears spark winegrower interest in CRISPR-edited, disease-resistant grapes
According to a study conducted in 2011 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, wine grapes were first domesticated around 8000 ...
Colombia aims to restart aerial glyphosate spraying of coca crops under pressure from US
Alhough coca crop size fell 9% in 2019 to the lowest level in six years, the capacity to produce cocaine ...
African women are leading biotechnology advance across the continent
Women researchers are strongly influencing the adoption of agricultural biotechnology in Africa. “As African women, we are the ones who ...
CRISPR could cut development time for high-yielding seeds by 5-10 years
Crop hybrid technologies have contributed to the significant yield improvement worldwide in the past decades. However, designing and maintaining a ...
Biotechnology gives plant breeders a leg up in ‘evolutionary arms race’ against crop diseases
While crop pests and diseases can be spread by environmental factors, such as the wind, they also move into new ...
‘Eat them, poison them, drive them to cannibalism’: Kenyan scientists explore creative solutions to East Africa locust swarms
Eat them, poison them, and use scent to drive them to cannibalism - as a second wave of locusts threatens ...
Uganda proposes ‘stop-gap’ rules to block GMO crops that could be brought illegally across Kenyan border
The National Environment Management Authority (NEMA), plans to draft regulations that will guide the environmental release of Genetically Modified Organisms ...
India floats glyphosate weedkiller restrictions to curb demand for illegal herbicide-tolerant cotton
The agriculture ministry, in a draft notification, has restricted the use of glyphosate only through Pest Control Operators (PCOs). “No ...
USDA proposes measures to crack down on fraud in organic farming
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) proposes amending the USDA organic regulations to strengthen oversight ...
Despite Europe’s strict GMO rules, biotechnology can still help farmers feed the continent
The EU has recently laid out a series of targets to dramatically reduce the amounts of chemicals used in European ...
Animal-free ice cream maker Perfect Day eyes launch of lab-made milk and mozzarella cheese
As many investments, new products and R&D have been slowed down in recent months, Perfect Day is continuing to grow ...
Antioxidant-rich corn could mitigate symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease, study finds
Flavonoids from a specific line of corn act as anti-inflammatory agents in the guts of mice with an inflammatory-bowel-disease-like condition, ...
Farming a ‘climate villain’? IPCC may have inflated greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that agriculture is one of the main sources of greenhouse gases, ...
Ghanaian chief calls for commercialization of GMOs
A Ghanaian chief, Nana Adjie Panin II, has called for the country’s commercialization of genetically modified (GM) seeds. Genetically modified ...
Food crops engineered to behave like drought-tolerant succulents may better adapt to climate change
“Water-storing tissue is one of the most successful adaptations in plants that enables them to survive long periods of drought ...
US GMO crop cultivation accelerates as farmers gain access to more biotech seeds
[Editor's note: GMO crops were widely adopted by US farmers after their initial approval in 1996. According to a new ...
Natural pesticide claimed as replacement for antibiotics as treatment for citrus greening disease decimating US citrus industry
The new treatment effectively kills the bacterium causing the disease with a naturally occurring molecule found in wild citrus relatives ...
