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.
Roundup on trial: Glyphosate-cancer settlement talks progress, but report of an $8 billion payout is ‘pure fiction’
Bayer AG is proposing to pay as much as $8 billion to settle more than 18,000 U.S. lawsuits alleging its ...
Will Beyond, Impossible burgers mark the downfall of ‘real’ beef?
There’s a famous Gandhi aphorism about how movements progress: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they ...
Viewpoint: Afraid of GMOs, CRISPR? Here’s the science that could change your mind
Scientists can do some amazing things with genes, from saving papayas from extinction, to making apples last longer before turning ...
Anti-GMOers join with anti-vaxxers to promote myth that glyphosate causes autism
Another one of those pseudoscientific tropes from the anti-vaccine religion has reared its ugly Bigfoot head – glyphosate causes autism. And, of course, the anti-vaxxers believe ...
Viewpoint: Why GMOs? 1950s farming technology cannot feed the world in 2050
Up and down the aisles of the grocery store, there are an overwhelming number of packages that are labeled with ...
New Zealand climate group says anti-GMO laws hinder development of sustainable technologies
AgResearch says it is working on whether its genetically modified ryegrass could move to NZ based field and animal nutrition ...
Food fight: Plant-based burgers stir debate over claims of nutritional advantages versus beef
Plant-based burger makers say their products are better for the planet than beef. Whether they are better for consumers’ health ...
As glyphosate—cancer legal battle intensifies, Bayer faces questions whether it needs to split up to survive
The glyphosate lawsuits—and the political backlash—stem from a finding by a division of the World Health Organisation, which said in ...
EPA blocks California from ‘misleadingly’ labeling glyphosate as ‘known to cause cancer,’ stating herbicide ‘does not pose a cancer risk’
Environmental Protection Agency News Release EPA Takes Action to Provide Accurate Risk Information to Consumers, Stop False Labeling on Products ...
Balance of Nature: Ecology’s enduring myth debunked
Strolling across his animated kingdom—Pride Rock in the distance—Mufasa explains to his young son Simba: “Everything you see exists together, ...
Nigerian farmer: ‘Give us the chance to use agricultural biotech’
African farmers must be given the opportunity to use genetically modified (GM) seeds as the sure way to enhance agricultural ...
Agricultural industry split over prospects of government not regulating gene editing as part of reform of biotechnology regulations
Crop developers say USDA’s effort to streamline its regulation of biotech crops will still slow the commercialization of many gene-edited ...
Activist group Friends of the Earth study reports farms 48 times more toxic than 25 years ago, blames neonicotinoids
[T]he United States’ agricultural landscape is 48 times more toxic to insects than it was 25 years ago. Per a ...
140+ Mexican scientists urge president not to issue decree pushed by ‘activists, painters and chefs’ banning GMO research
Members of the academic community related to biotechnology, bioengineering, genomics and related disciplines express their concern about the possibility of ...
Viewpoint: ‘Impossible Whopper’ success proves consumers want sustainable food and biotech stigma is overblown. How will meat producers respond?
“It will never be more than niche.” That’s what a cattleman friend of mine recently said about meat alternatives. I’m ...
Green chemicals: How DNA assembly tech streamlines microbe engineering to boost urban farming
Researchers at SMART, MIT's research enterprise in Singapore, and National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a technology that greatly ...
Honeybees and chemicals: Popular neonicotinoid insecticides ‘safe and effective,’ Australia confirms
There have been scientific studies published that suggest a link between the use of neonicotinoids and the declining health of ...
Skeptical about GMO food safety?
Scientists can do some amazing things with genes, from saving papayas from extinction, to making apples last longer before turning ...
South African farmer: Glyphosate ban would send agriculture back to the ‘Stone Age’
When I first heard about the activists who want to take away crop-protection products from African farmers like me, I ...
GMO mosquitoes could save millions from malaria but ‘progressive agroecologists’ mobilize against Gates-funded project
A child under 5 dies from malaria about every two minutes world-wide. Yet radical environmentalists are mobilizing against an important ...
Bayer may enter plant-based meat market as protein provider for Beyond and Impossible Burgers
A Bayer executive ... said the company was closely watching the plant-based meat market which has seen booming demand in ...
Brexit could lead Britain to ‘ditching EU’s mindless precaution and innovation-crushing rules on GMO crops’
Britain was once the world leader in biotechnology for agriculture, but that all changed 20 years ago when the environmental ...
Are crops ‘doused’ with glyphosate? Wheat farmer debunks popular Roundup myths, claims sustainability benefits
Too often, science and facts fall victim to fear mongering and emotion. Recently, we have seen an uptick in false ...
Untraceable CRISPR? New gene editing method modifies plants without leaving ‘foreign DNA’ footprint
Processes of traditional trait development in plants depend on genetic variations derived from spontaneous mutation or artificial random mutagenesis. Limited ...
With yields plunging, sugar beet growers in UK may discontinue growing crop in wake of neonicotinoid insecticide ban
Sugar beet is a crop that has always demanded close attention to grow well, but Norfolk grower Mark Means has ...
‘No safe exposure level’ for controversial pesticide chlorpyrifos, renewal unlikely, European officials conclude
The pesticide chlorpyrifos does not meet the criteria required by legislation for the renewal of its approval in the European ...
‘Homo gluttonous’: Could the history of our meat-eating, over-consuming species threaten the planet?
During our hunter-gatherer past, which constitutes 99 per cent of our history as a species, ... omnivorous tastes served us ...
