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.
Plant probiotics: Genetic switch in plants could trigger soil bacteria to increase crop yields
Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have pinpointed a key genetic switch that helps soil bacteria ...
Video: Genetic modification isn’t as ‘unnatural’ as you think
[Editor's note: Jenna Gallegos is a plant biotechnology PhD student at the University of California - Davis and a member ...
Non-GMO movement plagued by ‘rampant sexism’, critic says
It’s no secret that [moms are] among the most coveted demographics of the non-GMO marketing machine. Jeffrey Smith, one of ...
Australian commission calls for state governments to lift GM crop bans
The Productivity Commission has released a range of sweeping recommendations to cut the costs of regulation in agriculture. ... It ...
Potato pest developing resistance to neonicotinoid insecticides
The potato industry may be losing a mainstay in the battle against [the plant-feeding insect] psyllids, according to a recent ...
Extreme Green hypocrisy? Center for Biological Diversity, other anti-GMO groups partner on March for Science
[Editor's note: The following is an open letter to the Center for Biological Diversity regarding their participation in the "March ...
Beyond Golden Rice: Efforts abound to biofortify crops with vitamin A but regulatory hurdles high
[Editor's note: Giovanni Giuliano is research director at the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development.] Since ...
ChemChina’s proposed takeover of Syngenta fuels GMO fears among some in China
The opposition to genetically altered food and grains in China has been brought to the forefront by China National Chemical’s ...
Ripen on demand? New generation of GMO crops could dramatically increase yield
Farmers could one day control when their crops ripen after the development of modified rice that flowers on demand. Despite ...
CRISPR gene editing could speed up photosynthesis and boost crop yields—But it will take time
Unlike previous approaches to GM crops that introduce foreign DNA into an organism, genome editing achieves much the same outcome ...
Herbicide glyphosate now labeled ‘carcinogenic’ under CA’s Prop 65—Law that some say ‘only benefits lawyers’
The state of California can now require Roundup to have a label on it stating that it is a possible ...
‘Natural age is over’: UK Royal Society chief heralds ‘new age of biology’ but warns of resistance
Venki Ramakrishnan grew up in India and knows all about malnutrition and poor health. Today as President of ... the ...
To expedite development of climate-resistant crops, Australia may have to relax gene-editing rules
Australia's classification of genetic modification is inhibiting the country's potential for future crop growth, according to a University of Western ...
Monsanto, corporations accused of ‘buying scientists’ to place fake news in academic journals
[Editor's note: Paul Thacker is a consultant to nonprofits critical of GM technology. He is well known for his personal attacks on ...
Video: 14-year-old builds GMO food detector with parts ordered online for $110
While his classmates were playing video games or scrolling through Facebook, as many teenagers tend to do, Gaurav Mittal was ...
Is post-Brexit Britain poised to embrace less political, more science-based approach to regulating pesticides?
[Editor's note: The following is a briefing paper on bees and neonicotinoids by the House of Commons Library, a library ...
Dispute between Monsanto, Indian seed company could upend world’s largest cotton-producing market
A little-known cotton seed company has taken on Monsanto, with the aid of a right-wing Hindu group that helped propel ...
How Republicans and Democrats could work together to streamline biotech regulations
[Editor's note: Greg Jaffe is director of the Project on Biotechnology at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.] On ...
UK farmer: Here’s how the herbicide glyphosate helps me farm sustainably
[Editor's note: Ian Pigott is a farmer in Harpenden, UK. Located just 20 miles from the center of London, he grows ...
Dow, DuPont merger clears hurdle with approval by European Union
The European Commission has given the go-ahead to the merger of US chemical giants Dow Chemical and DuPont. The deal ...
7 strategies to better communicate the scientific consensus on GMO safety to skeptical millennials
The ... genetically engineered crops study by the National Academies of Sciences (NAS) is a true consensus on GMOs. ... How ...
Majority of EU countries vote against 2 new GM corn varieties but approval still possible
A majority of EU countries voted on Monday [March 27, 2017] against allowing two new genetically modified crops to be ...
‘New seed in town’: GM poppies from China exacerbate Afghanistan’s opium problem
A problem that Afghanistan and international governments have tried to eradicate for decades is only getting worse, and China is ...
Dietitian Mary Lee Chin: Why I consult with the food industry — including Monsanto
[Editor's note: On March 22, 2017, journalist Alex Orlov accused dietitian Mary Lee Chin of not publicly disclosing her ties to ...
GE canola with high levels of omega-3 fatty acids could be commercialized in Australia, US, Canada in 2018
A strain of canola which contains long-chain omega-3s has now been submitted for regulatory approval in Australia, with submissions in ...
Field trial shows insect-resistant GMO corn could help African countries fend off armyworm outbreak
Scientists have warned that the armyworm currently ravaging parts of Uganda could enter Kenya anytime, spelling doom for its stressed ...
EU leaning toward permanent ban of neonicotinoid insecticides, citing ‘acute risk to bees’
The world’s most widely used insecticides would be banned from all fields across Europe under draft regulations from the European ...
