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.
French Association for Scientific Information rebukes hysteria-promoting anti-pesticide activists for endangering sustainable agriculture
We are witnessing a new campaign promoting unfounded fears. In terms of the media, it all started with an AFP ...
Africa lags behind much of the world in embracing crop biotechnology, and the result is mass undernourishment
The African governments must decide if they want to fight poverty in the continent or continue to plunge millions of ...
Cure for hay fever? Genetically modified rice that does just that in clinical trials
After more than 20 years since research kicked off, a variety of genetically modified rice designed to alleviate cedar pollen ...
Here’s why simplistically demonizing ultra-processed foods is shortsighted
The resurgence of rhetoric around the food industry “feeding us poison,” spurred by figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (and ...
Outdated regulations and slow adoption of precision agriculture limit China’s agro-biotechnology advancements
The increase in agricultural productivity over the past century has enabled a five-fold increase in the human population and about ...
Viewpoint: $3 billion a year industry exploits unwarranted fears about the dangers of ‘synthetic chemicals’
A [paper published in Science] claims that even at low doses pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides are changing the behavior of ...
Is the fiber supplement psyllium the only supplement shown to really work?
In most cases, the supposed benefits of supplements popularized on social media aren’t backed by strong data. But there is ...
Podcast: Dr. Kevin Folta on the surge of disinformation about seed oils, glyphosate and genetically modified crops
Social media teems with false information about food and farming. Influencers cover Instagram and Facebook with claims that food is ...
Viewpoint: Is the criticism of organic food justified?
If you spend any time on the internet in spaces where people talk about food, nutrition, and the environment, you’ve ...
Video: Intransigent vegans: Look what happened when a financially-tottering California restaurant added regeneratively-farmed meat to its menu
A vegan restaurant chain has been forced to close for good following furious customers criticizing them for putting meat and ...
Pork from gene-edited disease resistant pigs should be on grocery shelves in 2025
[R]eports suggest that gene editing could bring us disease-resistant pork as soon as 2025. It’s been thirty years since the ...
Poop is helping to feed the world. Really
A new industrial facility in suburban Seattle is giving off a whiff of futuristic technology. It can safely treat fecal ...
The controversy over ultra-processed foods: Some are healthy, some are not
[One] study is helping to answer a pressing nutrition question: Which ultra-processed foods are harming our health—and which might not ...
Viewpoint: U.S. taxpayer funded UN sub-agency International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)’s broken cancer evaluation system hurts consumers and the regulatory process
TPAF [Taxpayers Protection Alliance Foundation] has even been able to use FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] requests to hold global ...
Bioenergy: Booster gene could naturally jump plant growth 30%
A gene called Booster has been identified in poplar trees that boosts photosynthesis and growth by up to 200% in controlled ...
35 years after Alar hysteria devastated the apple industry, there are more varieties than ever before. What happened?
[I]n 1989 the apple industry was hit with the notorious “Alar Scare” when the environmental group NRDC asserted that a ...
Global farming revolution since the 1960s: ‘A miracle of science, technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship
The global production of six major food and animal feed crops (corn, wheat, rice, soybeans, cassava, and millet) has dramatically ...
Viewpoint: NGO claim that crop pesticides has led to hundreds of thousands of poisoning deaths has proven false but activists don’t retract it
“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” The sentence in the ...
How ‘clean food’ ingredients are opening a new frontier in skin care
The promise to support skin health, the immune system and the microbiome, among other benefits, is driving parts of the ...
What defines ‘Regenerative Agriculture’ and does it deliver real benefits?
While explicit promotion of “Regenerative Agriculture” is a relatively recent trend, it’s practical implementation typically involves a combination of already ...
Extreme weather is threatening global food supplies. What can be done?
As the world grapples with the challenge of feeding a growing population against an increasingly unstable backdrop, leading journal Science ...
Viewpoint: The downsides of the ‘clean eating’ fad
“Clean eating” is a dietary trend focused on consuming whole foods while avoiding processed and packaged foods with refined sugars, ...
Video: Feed the Planet: Building a cooler relationship between an Earth for 8 billion
George Steinmetz and Andrew Revkin discuss, Building a Cooler Relationship Between People and Planet, a new book covering how humanity ...
An alliance between Democrat Cory Booker and RFK, Jr.?
New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker could potentially have a new and unexpected partner to push his objectives on improving ...
China barrels ahead in its quest to exploit agricultural biotechnology, leaving other countries behind
China has approved five gene-edited crop varieties and 12 types of genetically modified (GM) soybean, corn and cotton, expanding approvals ...
Mexico’s rejection of U.S. GMO corn and glyphosate not based on science, trade panel rules
United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai [has] announced that the United States has prevailed in its dispute under the United ...
Grocery store shoppers love organic food and regenerative farming but balk at having to pay for it
Joseph Balagtas is a Purdue University professor of agriculture economics and the director of the Center for Food Demand Analysis and ...
