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.
Australia glyphosate-cancer class action lawsuit gets underway
The first directions hearing in a class action against chemical giant Monsanto, over claims commonly used herbicide Roundup causes cancer, ...
Public will accept CRISPR if they trust scientists who develop the technology, sociologist says
As a sociologist who studies food and agriculture, I’m frequently asked whether the public is going to accept gene-edited foods ...
EU Parliament calls for full ban on sale, production and use of neonicotinoid pesticides to protect bees
The European Parliament has called on the Commission to strengthen its plan to protect Europe’s declining populations of bees and ...
CRISPR immunizes rice against multiple diseases, preserving crop yields and biodiversity
Scientists from China National Rice Research Institute used CRISPR-Cas9 to edit Semi-Dwarf1 (SD1) in elite Chinese rice varieties, which has ...
GMO plants produce antibiotic to fight off deadly bacterial infection—without harming environment
Scientists from the University of Glasgow have discovered a safe and novel method that can safeguard important crops from the ...
Consumers love technology, survey shows—but not when it comes to GMOs and farming
Technology in agriculture is how we’ll feed a growing population, make farming more sustainable and improve the lives of farm ...
Natural coloring from purple carrots could replace some synthetic food dyes
Purple Carrots sound like something straight out of the creative mind of Dr. Seuss. But they might just become North ...
Lab-grown burgers? Cell-based steaks? Alternative meat industry scrambles to find consumer-friendly product names
The debate over what to call cell-cultured meat remains unresolved—and it could soon develop into a headache for the global ...
USDA organic farming standards ‘loophole’ may threaten rainforests
Many shoppers have heard about the high environmental costs of palm oil. Take, for example, the fact that much of ...
New CRISPR gene-drive system could crack down on antibiotic resistance in animal agriculture
Taking advantage of powerful advances in CRISPR gene editing, scientists at the University of California San Diego have set their ...
‘Dicamba fatigue’: State regulators anticipate more off-target damage from Bayer’s controversial herbicide in 2020
Three consecutive years of off-target dicamba injury is taking its toll on the agricultural industry. Leo Reed even has a ...
Newly released GMO cowpea brings Nigeria closer to food security, local biotech experts say
In a statement by the Cowpea Manager of the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), Issoufou Kollo Abdourhamane, the approval [for ...
Bayer asks appeals court to toss ‘speculative’ $25 million glyphosate-cancer verdict
Bayer AG on [Dec. 16] said it has asked a U.S. federal appeals court to throw out a $25 million ...
Consumer skepticism of plant-based meat could slow Impossible Foods’ expansion into Asia
If the American fake-meat darlings Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have their way, chef Raymond Xie will soon be able ...
Plagued by citrus greening disease, US citrus production down more than 50% since mid-1990s
The United States remains one of the world’s top citrus-producing nations, trailing only Brazil and China in annual production. However, ...
Reduced tillage increases long-term corn, soybean yields, study shows
Agriculture degrades over 24 million acres of fertile soil every year, raising concerns about meeting the rising global demand for ...
‘Fine-tuned’ wheat varieties could boost Europe’s grain yields up to 90%, study suggests
European wheat harvests could be increased by more than 5 tonnes a hectare according to newly published research into the ...
Nigeria commercializes its first GMO food crop
Nigeria has reached a major food security milestone with the commercial release of insect-resistant cowpea — its first genetically modified ...
Barley leaf rust resistance genes may help plant breeders battle deadly crop disease
An international team led by researchers at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) has identified genes that ...
GMOs: fastest adopted crop technology in ‘history of modern agriculture’
Biotech crops are considered as the fastest adopted crop technology in the history of modern agriculture, according to ISAAA Pocket ...
99% of tested food samples ‘well below’ EPA pesticide safety limits, new USDA report shows
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) [Dec. 10] published the 2018 Pesticide Data Program (PDP) Annual ...
Impossible Burger, Beyond Burger earn endorsement from anti-GMO Center for Biological Diversity
The Center for Biological Diversity supports Beyond and Impossible burgers and other food innovations urgently needed to accelerate the shift ...
New Zealand mulls loosening strict biotech crop rules as GMO ryegrass shows promise in field trial
While New Zealand has not yet approved the release of genetically modified crops, its agricultural research agency’s principle scientist has ...
Farmers may soon use drones to battle herbicide-resistant weeds
Remote sensing provides an alternative to ground-based manual scouting for weeds in agriculture fields. And, while many advances have been ...
Opportunity to develop disease-resistant crops ‘has never been greater,’ plant pathologists say
Approaches to manipulating disease resistance in plants is expanding exponentially due to advances in our understanding of plant defense mechanisms ...
Austria’s January 2020 glyphosate ban halted on technical grounds
An Austrian ban on the weedkiller glyphosate, a substance that has long been disputed in Europe and beyond, can’t take ...
Viewpoint: Conventional, organic farmers risk alienating consumers by ‘trashing’ each other’s products
I once rescued a car from a mechanic who was pushing much unnecessary “repair” work. The ethical mechanic I took ...
