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.
US should follow Canada in cracking down on non-GMO label when no GMO version exists
. . . [M]ore and more companies are slapping non-GMO labels onto products for which there is no GMO equivalent ...
Mark Bittman’s wrong: Mega production monocultures of corn and soy aren’t result of GMOs
Mark Bittman has an editorial today in the New York Times on the new GMO labeling laws. . . . I was ...
Bayer nears end game in merger talks with Monsanto
German pharmaceutical and crops manufacturer Bayer AG (BAYGn.DE) said on [September 5, 2016] that its negotiations with Monsanto Co (MON.N) had ...
Indian officials call on researchers to produce GMO chickpea within two years
Director-General of the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) Trilochan Mohapatra has asked agricultural scientists to double their work on ...
Bangladesh’s GMO brinjal success undermines anti-GMO narrative
The anti-GMO narrative – and that is what it is, a story – has several consistent elements:. . . ...
How should we evaluate impact of substituting glyphosate for more toxic herbicides?
A new paper was just published in the journal Science Advances that analyzes pesticide use data for farmers in the U.S. . . The authors['s] ...
Rachel Parent’s call to “teach the controversy” on GMOs echoes creationist attack on evolution
One of the latest contributions from [Huffington Post] . . .comes courtesy of self-described teenage "food safety activist" Rachel Parent. . . Her new article is ...
Rachel Parent, teenage anti-GMO activist, claims teachers fall prey to GMO PR
Today, PR spin proclaims that GM is safe and absolutely necessary for fighting world hunger and feeding a growing population ...
India promoting advanced biotechnology for biofuel production
Biofuel made from microalgae can prove to be an alternative to conventional fossil fuels, said experts participating in the international ...
Dietician, mom advises ‘don’t be shamed by misleading labels,’ ignore butterfly Non-GMO label
. . . As a teenager, heading back to school might inspire "label" anxiety - that of the "did I get ...
Whistleblower awarded $22 million for alerting SEC about Monsanto’s misstated earnings
A former financial executive at Monsanto Co. will collect a nearly $22.5 million reward for alerting the Securities and Exchange Commission to alleged ...
Anti-GMO protestors throw feces, eggs at European plant breeding conference
Imagine being so upset that a group of plant breeders and botanists are talking about agriculture that you storm in ...
‘Frankenfood’ characterization stifles real discussion of social issues raised by GMOs
. . . Frankenstein. . . [articulates] the public’s visceral fears of scientific and technological innovation. Indeed, the pejorative prefix Franken- has taken ...
Cornell University offering free online course on GMOs
Genetically Modified Organisms have been a topic of much controversy. . . Cornell is now offering a Massive Online Open ...
Monsanto joins Environmental Defense Fund, others in sustainable agriculture coalition
. . . [W]e are officially launching the Midwest Row Crop Collaborative (MRCC): a diverse coalition working to expand on-the-ground solutions to ...
Lichens formed through symbiosis among three organisms, not two
Lichens have an important place in biology. . . . they’re composite organisms, consisting of fungi that live in partnership ...
Video: Why are GMOs bad?
Why are GMOs bad? Each crop, like every organism, produces hundreds of thousands of proteins. With GMOs, one or two of ...
Minnesota governor issues executive order limiting use of neonicotinoid pesticides for farms but not homes
Minnesota governor Mark Dayton on Aug. 25 issued an executive order limiting the use of nicotine-based pesticides known as neonicotinoids ...
Non-browning GMO Fuji Apple sets positive precedent for small biotech firms
. . . . A third Arctic Apple cultivar (Fuji) is currently going through the USDA deregulation . . . Apparently the public ...
Will gene editing, corporate consolidation bring agricultural revolution?
A new day is dawning for agriculture. When asked to describe the magnitude of the coming change, experts harken back ...
India’s intellectual property rights battle with Monsanto could cripple innovation
Unfortunately, in its campaign to lessen farmers’ reliance on Monsanto seeds, the [Indian] government has chosen to use the bluntest ...
Europe’s battle over glyphosate ‘was never about science’
André Heitz is an agronomist and a former international civil servant for the United Nations. . . . [T]he European Commission ...
Bee scientist joins Monsanto to battle varroa mites, save honeybees
About a third of the nation’s honeybees have died each winter over the past decade, and [Jerry] Hayes, an apiary ...
New biofortified GMO rice will cost farmers no more than conventional
A NEW genetically modified rice variety could improve the health of people suffering from nutrient deficiencies in Asia. The variety, ...
Why Bangladesh’s GMO eggplant success angers anti-GMO activists
This blog was written by Kevin Folta, chair of the horticultural department at the University of Florida. Kevin hosts a ...
Victoria, Canada City Council questions GMO safety, endorses mandatory labeling in Canada
Genetically engineered crops, plants and trees are not welcome in Victoria. City councillors have unanimously backed a multi-part motion last ...
Comparing conventional vs. organic: Don’t judge sustainability by yield alone
[T]wo colleagues and I published a paper in PLOS ONE titled “Commercial crop yields reveal strengths and weaknesses for organic ...
