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.
Consumer alert: ‘Natural,’ ‘Low fat’ and ‘light’ are among many unregulated labels that confuse food shopper
The world of food labeling and marketing is often an impenetrable forest of terms, numbers, and nutritional facts that turns ...
Spewing misinformation about cultivated meat, Arizona lawmaker wants to send science innovators to prison
The season of state-level attempts to ban cultivated meat has begun. [In January], policymakers in Virginia, South Dakota, and Arizona ...
China leads Asia in its slow embrace of genetically modified crops
Asian countries are shifting their position on GMOs, though the pace and motives differ by country, said Nandini Roy Choudhury, ...
Glyphosate’s contributions to cutting greenhouse gas emissions
I get many emotive emails about the evils of glyphosate, many of them from sources who also send me anti-vax ...
Agriculture is both victim and contributor of climate change. Here’s how plant breeding can help turn the tide
Climate change exerts an unparalleled impact on agriculture. Yet the sector also contributes 20% to the annual increase to human-driven ...
Viewpoint: Activists attempt to create a scandal over retracted 25-year-old narrative summary on glyphosate safety falls flat
[W]e learned that an old narrative review published 25 years ago about glyphosate has been retracted. Of course, as soon ...
‘We are approaching a watershed moment for psychedelic health care with ‘magic mushroom’ psilocybin the star’
In the billion-dollar race to commercialize psychedelic medicine, psilocybin, a naturally occurring hallucinogen better known as magic mushrooms, or “shrooms,” ...
What’s at stake as Europe attempts to depoliticize its agricultural biotechnology regulations and bring them more in accord with science
The current European regulatory framework relating to new genomic techniques (NGTs) is undergoing a thorough review. The ruling of the ...
Restrictions on synthetic dyes and ultra-processed foods: RFK, Jr.’s MAHA movement policies gain traction in statehouses
When one of Adam Burkhammer’s foster children struggled with hyperactivity, the West Virginia legislator and his wife decided to alter ...
Viewpoint: With indiscriminate cuts to food programs, the U.S., not nature, is destabilizing global agriculture
[L]ately, the United States, not nature, has created the biggest uncertainty for global agriculture. Until last year, when the Trump ...
Viewpoint: France’s Le Monde endorses bizarre activist conspiracy disinformation about the ‘dangers’ of gene-edited crops
Le Monde published on December 10 (date on the web) and 11 (date of the print edition, published the day ...
Bayer on SCOTUS: It should not face liablity in state courts for alleged health damages caused by its weedkiller Roundup (glyphosate) when independent federal agencies have reviewed thousands of studies and labeled it safe
The U.S. Supreme Court today announced that it will review the Durnell Roundup™ case. Monsanto petitioned the court to hear ...
Supreme Court agrees to review Bayer’s request to block lawsuits claiming federally-approved herbicide glyphosate causes cancer
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review Monsanto’s appeal seeking immunity from lawsuits related to its popular herbicide, Roundup ...
Viewpoint: Why RFK, Jr.’s promotion of ‘natural medicines and food’ is simplistic, often ignorant, and sometimes dangerous
Often, we’re given a choice between certain things – such as foods, medicines or procedures – that are deemed natural, ...
How MAHA policies are fast-changing the ingredients in popular foods
Make America Healthy Again. Ozempic. Fibermaxxing. Powerful forces are pushing the U.S. food industry to make what could be the ...
Bloated advice: MAHA influencers are flooding social media with misinformation on gut health
“I had one patient who saw a TikTok video about doing a colon cleanse, bought something over the counter to ...
‘A whole lot of (methane) gas’: Grass-fed beef is not better for the climate, experts agree
Roughly a quarter of all global greenhouse gases come from food production, and beef accounts for the single biggest share ...
Viewpont—’Weight gain is not a necessary component of a highly ultra-processed diet’: A nuanced look at America’s ‘deadly diet’
In the past half century, nutrition scientists have blamed health conditions such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease on many ...
AI is a revolutionary tool to increase global farming output and food productivity
With the world's population projected to reach nearly 10 billion by 2050, the global agricultural sector faces a defining challenge ...
Despite ‘no conflicts of interest’ pledge, several of Kennedy’s dietary advisors have ties to the meat and dairy industry
Soon after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in as the nation’s health secretary, he promised to overhaul the federal ...
In the UK effort to align more with Europe, will it mothball its recently relaxed policy on gene-edited crops?
The [UK] government is attempting to negotiate an opt-out from European laws that ban the commercialisation of most forms of ...
RFK, Jr. ends ‘war on saturated fats’: A win for meat-maxing influencers, a loss for common-sense eating
For decades, nutrition experts and health officials have warned against eating too much saturated fat. Red meat, full-fat dairy products, ...
Supreme Court may consider blocking further suits targeting the weedkiller glyphosate, which global regulatory agencies have found safe
The Supreme Court is poised to decide whether to take up a case involving weedkillers and cancer that could effectively ...
Why are we not eating more cell-based meat? Blame over-regulation, protectionist states, and skeptical consumers
In , we wrote about the excitement consumers and investors had for a new type of protein. By 2013, investors ...
‘Goes against decades of evidence’: RFK, Jr.’s new food pyramid draws backlash from heart health and nutrition groups
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has announced new dietary guidelines for Americans focused on promoting whole foods, proteins and ...
Europe’s small step to unwind its science-free precautionism of crop biotech
The European Union recently agreed to ease restrictions on new genomic techniques (NGTs) for food, in the most significant change to ...
Viewpoint: ‘Ripped from the playbook’—The politics behind San Francisco’s Big Food case
The companies behind Tony the Tiger, Fruit Loops, Heinz ketchup, Coca-Cola, Oreo, and Lucky Charms are lawyering up as the ...
