Daily Food & Agriculture 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.
Agriculture economist Jayson Lusk on why public is wary of GMOs
Just as more Americans grow wary of GMOs, the scientific community is moving in the opposite direction. There is now ...
Monsanto’s Robb Fraley invites Neil Young to tour company
I believe that Neil Young has a heart of gold. The singer/songwriter has been one of my favorite artists ever ...
Video: UN goals for reducing hunger best achieved by investing in agricultural research
Bjørn Lomborg, director of non-profit think tank Copenhagen Consensus, says that investing in agricultural research and development is one of the best ...
Monsanto rep engages Skeptic Society
Around the world there are “Skeptics in the Pub” events that gather folks from the local community who are interested ...
GMO or not? Is new genetically edited herbicide tolerant canola oil a GMO?
Cibus is a San Diego-based biotech company developing new ways to genetically engineer crops, without producing so-called GMOs. They're hoping ...
‘The End of Plenty’ author Joel Bourne, Jr: No GMO ‘damages’ but ‘no great benefits’
By 2040, the world’s population is predicted to rise to nine billion. More than 800 million people are malnourished. Another ...
Genetics suggest wheat gluten allergies mostly imaginary
Some of the anti-glutenists argue that we haven’t eaten wheat for long enough to adapt to it as a species ...
Gene identified for scent could lead to perfect rose
Fresh clues emerged this week when scientists identified the gene partly responsible for the delicate scent of the rose. The ...
Organic seed development lags biotech in developing pest controlling varieties
Rearranging veggie genes is big business, and we're not even talking about biotechnology. Private companies and university researchers spend hundreds ...
German Greens and Social Democrats propose national GMO ban
Germany’s debate over banning genetically modified (GM) plants has come to a head: Green/Social Democratic coalitions in the states of Rhineland-Palatinate, ...
Administration proposal to overhaul GMO regulations welcomed, but sharp divide on goals
The Obama administration said on July 2 that it would update the way the government regulated genetically modified crops and some ...
Why farmers are offended by buzzwords like ‘sustainable agriculture’
The Risk-Monger spent the day on a large Belgian farm having the opportunity to see the challenges and opportunities farmers ...
Could Africa’s own indigenous ‘superfoods’ rival GMOs?
Superfoods exist in Africa thanks not to the genius and beneficence of a foreign company, but rather through millennia of ...
Maui County’s GMO ban overturned by federal judge
A federal judge has invalidated Maui County’s moratorium on genetically engineered crops that voters approved last fall. Judge Susan Mollway ...
Cuban authorities say there are no plans to introduce GMOs
Authorities in Cuba have said that they have no plans to introduce the use of transgenic seeds to the Cuban ...
Public concerned more about GMOs created with ‘foreign’ versus ‘apple-to-apple’ gene transfer
In a study recently published in the journal Appetite, colleagues and I examined why some people reject GM technology. Specifically, ...
Why GMOs should be part of California’s drought strategy
In the midst of the most severe drought ever recorded in California, Governor Jerry Brown, the master of passionate rhetoric and ...
Friends of the Earth ‘investigation’ of GMO science supporters dismissed as “contrived”
Like a previous report from food activist Michele Simon a few years ago (Best PR Money Can Buy) the Alliance for ...
CropLife says IARC “hazard” herbicides classifications confuse regulators and consumers, distort science
In March, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization (WHO), ...
Indian farmer suicide more closely linked to small farm size and rain reliance than GMO cotton
An interesting new paper (Gutierrez 2015 cited below) discusses the way in which rain-fed cotton could be managed in India ...
IARC evaluation of herbicides glyphosate and 2,4-D ‘flawed’ and ‘redundant’
In March I wrote about the travesty of the International Agency on Research in Cancer’s four-day review of glyphosate (the ...
Upgrading photosynthesis through genetic engineering
The amount of land dedicated to farming is shrinking, the world's crop productivity is stagnating, and the population is still ...
False alarms raised by groups demanding stricter GMO regulations
There have been calls recently from predictable sources demanding “tougher regulations for genetically engineered (GE) crops under the federal Plant ...
Will regulators show flexibility toward ‘double-muscled’ pigs made by editing single gene?
Belgian Blue cattle are hulking animals that provide unusually large amounts of prized, lean cuts of beef, the result of ...
Why are bees hurting? A lineup of suspects
In my last piece I made the case that the rumors of honeybee extinction have been greatly exaggerated, but honeybees ...
Failed GMO wheat trial only fits anti-GMO narrative if you don’t understand science
Back in 2012, a group of clueless protesters tried to disrupt a trial of genetically-modified wheat, which was taking place ...
Genetics and selective breeding create better blueberry
At the Flavors of Florida — a cornucopia of science-enhanced produce, seafood and meat recently held at the University of ...
