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.
She’s baaaack! ‘Plandemic’ anti-vaccine disinformation ‘star’ Judy Mikovits now warning glyphosate, GMOs boost COVID-19 risk
[In early May], I wrote about Plandemic, a viral video featuring disgraced scientist turned antivaxxer turned COVID-19 “Fire Fauci” conspiracy ...
Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker propose phased in ‘factory farming’ ban to clamp down on ‘Big Ag’
Sen. Elizabeth Warren announced [May 7] that she would be co-sponsoring Sen. Cory Booker's bill to phase out large-scale factory ...
EU Food Safety Authority defends pesticide risk studies activists call ‘unfit for purpose’
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has published the results of its two pilot assessments on the risks posed to ...
Video: Iceland breeds heat-tolerant trees to restore native forests amid climate change
The landscape of Iceland has changed a lot in a thousand years. When the Vikings first arrived in the ninth ...
As anti-pesticide sentiment builds, USDA backs plan to combat invasive Russian wheat aphid with wasps
Turning loose a non-native wasp to sting and kill an aphid that feasts on wheat and barley in the Western ...
Viewpoint: Coronavirus pandemic accelerates progress toward tech-driven, sustainable food system
COVID-19 presents our food system with unprecedented challenges that we must learn from. We must also remember that COVID-19 is ...
USDA, FDA should streamline ‘fragmented’ lab-grown meat regulation, Government Accountability Office finds
General information about the process of making cell-cultured meat—food products grown from the cells of livestock, poultry, and seafood—is available ...
COVID-19 may stall Nigeria’s rollout of GMO cowpea
The COVID-19 pandemic may delay the rollout of pest-resistant Bt cowpea, Nigeria’s first genetically modified (GM) food crop. The country’s ...
COVID pandemic illustrates how seed banks help combat hunger in times of crisis
In our daily search for pasta and flour, not to mention toilet paper, we are now learning the hard way ...
Viewpoint: Modern ‘post-truth’ politics ignores sustainability benefits of GMOs and pesticides
As Africa shows, locust plagues can be devastating for food security, and climate science enables us to detect that certain ...
Agriculture is ‘ecocide’? Third-generation farmer takes on environmental objections to modern food production
When times are tough and people are struggling, we tend to look for someone to blame. The op-ed “Link between ...
GMO tomato as edible COVID vaccine? Mexican scientists work to make it a reality
While large companies and public sector consortiums in the United States, Canada, China and Europe are running at full speed ...
Second massive locust swarm hits East Africa, exacerbating already severe food shortage threat
They’re back: Trillions of locusts descend on East Africa in second wave. Think of locusts as giant, hormonally charged, very ...
Following restaurant debut, gene-edited, heart-healthy soybean oil now available directly to consumers
Plant-based technology company Calyxt has launched a direct-to-consumer site for its high oleic soybean cooking oil, Calyno, which is claimed ...
Despite GMO Bt insect-resistant cotton approval, Ethiopia still skittish about widespread biotech crop cultivation
The Ethiopian government has denied approving the commercial cultivation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) other than two Bt cotton varieties ...
Plant-based beef ingredients from China may hurt Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat sales
While America's biggest beef and pork producers were nearly laid low in April by COVID-19 cases in their workforce, sales ...
GMO corn cultivation in Europe has no adverse environmental effects, decade-long study confirms
In European regulations for the deliberate release into the environment of genetically modified organisms (GMO), the objective of General Surveillance ...
Impossible Foods rolls out plant-based GMO burger to 1,700 new stores as COVID-19 strains meat supplies
As more meat plants temporarily close or operate at reduced capacity as coronavirus spreads, plant-based brands “have a window of ...
Ethiopian geneticist defends his country’s decision to approve GMO insect-resistant Bt cotton
A recent report by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service welcoming the Government of Ethiopia’s (GOE) ...
Glyphosate to blame for COVID-19? Here’s how we know Bayer’s weedkiller didn’t cause the pandemic
An MIT computer scientist with no expertise in agriculture, chemistry, toxicology, or the biological sciences. And yet for some reason, ...
US government launches GMO website, may allow GM crops in some wildlife refuges
While much of the United States government’s recent activity has focused on COVID-19, some agencies are continuing their work in ...
EU could make 25% of its farmland organic by 2030 to combat biodiversity loss
The EU could set a target of one-quarter of agricultural land in Europe to be farmed organically by 2030, with ...
Reversing herbicide resistance? Geneticists uncover source of ‘dreaded’ pigweed’s glyphosate tolerance
Just hearing “pigweed” can cause fear in cotton and soybean farmers, but a Clemson University geneticist and others believe they ...
Facing weak yields and poor weather, Bolivian farmers demand access to new GMO seeds
Facing declining yields and inclement weather, smallholder farmers in Bolivia are asking the government to approve of the use of ...
Animal breeding advances yield disease-resistant chickens to combat hunger in Africa
In many low and middle-income countries, indigenous chickens are an integral part of the farming system and are an important ...
Podcast: ‘Food bullying’ fear of GMO insulin parallels skepticism of biotech crops
Our guest, Heather Barnes, tells parents, “You are doing great.” Having a child with different dietary needs opens the door ...
Precision (plant) medicine: Biotech drug delivery system fights diseases pesticides can’t control
A new method developed by engineers at MIT may offer a starting point for delivering life-saving treatments to plants ravaged ...
