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.
CRISPR gene editing protects apples from orchard-destroying fire blight disease
The bacterium Erwinia amylovora, the causal agent of fire blight disease in apple, triggers its infection through the DspA/E effector ...
Viewpoint: Processed food does not necessarily mean it’s unhealthy—the science behind an essential but misunderstood technology
You are you and I am me because of processed foods, because our ancestors learned how to cook meat and make bread and, perhaps ...
How biotech gets potentially harmful chemical acrylamide out of fries, crackers and other popular foods
The discovery of [the carcinogenic chemical] acrylamide in foods like crackers, cookies, potato chips, and french fries rattled food makers ...
Natural plant enzyme could aid efforts to produce medicine in crops
Plants can do many amazing things. Among their talents, they can manufacture compounds that help them repel pests, attract pollinators, ...
Consumers largely prefer ‘real’ beef, despite plant-based burger’s surging popularity, survey shows
With all the news about Beyond Meat’s stock price and the rolling out of the Impossible Burger at Burger King, ...
Chemical-free pest control tools on the way thanks to novel gene silencing strategy
In insects, rapidly evolving primary sex-determining signals are transduced by a conserved regulatory module controlling sexual differentiation. In the agricultural ...
Viewpoint: France commissions new glyphosate-cancer study to justify more weed killer regulations
After reading this article, I relay the following comment from the collective Science-Technologies-Action (STA): “At the request of the [French] ...
Montreal plans to ban glyphosate herbicide despite safety assurances from scientists and pesticide regulators
Montreal plans to ban the use of glyphosate — a commonly used herbicide marketed primarily under the trade name Roundup ...
Viewpoint: Organic or conventional produce? Doesn’t matter—just eat more fruits and vegetables
All fruits and vegetables are good for you, but when people start talking about how to eat healthy, the word ...
Can indoor farming surmount agriculture’s biggest challenges?
A car park opposite the infamous New York City housing estate where rapper Jay-Z grew up seems an unlikely place ...
Growing some crops under solar panels boosts water efficiency, electricity generation
Solar panels might seem like they’re in direct competition with plants. One is catching sunlight to do photosynthesis, the other ...
Activist groups sue EPA to block expanded approval of alleged ‘bee-killing’ insecticide sulfoxaflor
Beekeepers asked the Ninth Circuit on [September 6] to block the federal government’s approval of the unrestricted use of the ...
Virus-resistant wheat could aid UK farmers denied access to neonicotinoid insecticides
RAGT Seeds is to launch a winter wheat variety with a high level of resistance to barley yellow dwarf virus ...
Podcast: Turning mushrooms into bacon (and other cool stuff) to boost sustainability
Today John Cumbers [founder and CEO of SynBioBeta] talks with Eben Bayer, CEO and Co-Founder of the biomaterials company Ecovative ...
Nitrates in deli meat dangerous? Food labels and cancer claims don’t tell the whole story
NPR just ran a scare piece called "Duped In The Deli Aisle? 'No Nitrates Added' Labels Are Often Misleading," which ...
Funnel web spider venom kills a human in an hour—can we use it to battle deadly honeybee pests?
A bite from a funnel web spider delivers neurotoxins that can kill an adult in hours, or a child in ...
Hormel, Kellogg launch ‘non-GMO’ plant-based meats to compete with Beyond, Impossible
Hormel said [September 4] it will launch its own plant-based meat brand, following Kellogg’s announcement of a similar addition to ...
Plant geneticist Kevin Folta: Scientific American’s rewritten anti-GMO article a ‘lesser abomination’
The Scientific American article about "dying broccoli" and "toxic corn" drew wide criticism for its unreferenced and outright false indictment ...
Glyphosate-cancer battle escalates as Germany aims to ban Roundup after 2023
Angela Merkel’s government aims to phase out herbicides containing glyphosate by the end of 2023, a move that could generate ...
US world leader in GMO research, cultivation—growing 75 million hectares in 2018
The US remains as the top producer of biotech crops in 2018, according to the Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM ...
Cloning tool spots ‘foreign DNA,’ minimizes off-target changes with CRISPR gene editing
Researchers from Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain and Durham University in the UK developed a tried and tested cloning system ...
Viewpoint: Myth debunked—GM crops haven’t radically changed our food supply
[In August] South Australia announced it would be lifting its ban on the growth of genetically modified organisms (GMO) ...
EU farmers ‘fed up’ with rapeseed as neonicotinoid insecticide ban, dry weather cripple crop yields
Rapeseed, easily spotted with its bright yellow flowers in summer, is used for meal and oil in products ranging from ...
Can we stop stupid politics from ruining carbon farming?
It seems like every Democratic presidential candidate wants to get farmers sucking carbon out of the air and sticking it ...
Should your dog eat ‘paleo’ kibble? How misleading pet food labels fool consumers
Zealotry about pet food is every bit as self-satisfied as a Food Babe mantra. Since food is the new religion, ...
Climate change boosted banana production for 60 years, but hotter temperatures could finally cut yield gains
Climate change could negatively impact banana cultivation in some of the world’s most important producing and exporting countries, a study ...
Viewpoint: Developing world farmers see GMO crop adoption as path to prosperity
Farmers on the frontiers of prosperity are choosing GM seeds. They’re embracing this technology so much that 54 percent of ...
