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.
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 ...
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, ...
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 ...
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 ...
How once food-poor India’s advanced seed genetics usurped China’s global dominance of rice production
India has become the world's largest rice producer, beating China, with a total output of 150.18 million tonnes, Union Agriculture ...
Detox cleanses are a quick fix that don’t work
Detox cleanses are all over social media, with people claiming the diets remove toxins, help you lose weight and supposedly ...
Ten-year-old prediction that ‘glyphosate will make half of all children autistic by 2025’ proven false and looney. Date moved to 2032
A big date has arrived. Those of us who have been following pseudoscience for some time will remember that way ...
Viewpoint: ‘All exposed, all contaminated’—How France learned to fear its food
According to the latest Eurobarometer on food safety in the European Union, published at the end of September 2025 by ...
Viewpoint: European farmers protest the nightmare of the Green Deal and other science-rejectionist EU agricultural regulations
Over the past two years, farmers throughout Europe have mobilized on a scale that should dominate news headlines. ... European farmers are ...
Well-intentioned but scientifically misguided activist claims of what constitutes biological diversity hinder actual biodiversity and agricultural progress
... [S]ince the 1990s, well-intentioned laws shifted the governance of biodiversity from a shared global resource to the sovereign control ...
Viewpoint: RFK, Jr., MAHA, and USDA close ranks in support of ‘regenerative agriculture’. Here’s why this trendy concept is bad policy
[On December 10, 2025], Kennedy, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins, and Dr. “Snakeoil” Oz trotted out in front of the cameras ...
Okay, but not nearly enough: EU’s loosened restrictions on CRISPR and other gene-edited crops help, but it’s still a wasteful long-haul for approvals
The first part of the EU’s Biotech Act has been published. The act, which is mainly focused on health, also ...
CRISPR chicken: Could gene editing be the key to cheaper poultry?
Chicken is one of the world’s most affordable and widely consumed proteins, yet its price remains surprisingly sensitive to feed ...
Discovery of growth ‘switch’ in cold-hardy plants could unlock pathways to develop more cold-resilient crops
Scientists in South Korea have discovered a rapid molecular “switch” that reprograms plant growth in response to cold stress. The ...
Corporate control, ecological challenges and food safety: Challenges await expansion of the gene-editing crop revolution
Ethical considerations surrounding genome editing are as complex as the science itself. As the debate rages on about the safety ...
Europe’s veggie burger wars: Farmer backlash against plant-based labeling restrictions stall
EU wrangling over whether to give plant-based "sausages" and veggie "burgers" the chop and restrict such labels to meat products ...
Bitter dark chocolate appears to slow the aging process
The same chemical that makes dark chocolate taste bitter could help slow the ticking of your biological clock. A new ...
The expanding role of robotics in agriculture … on Earth and in space
Despite challenges, agriculture remains an appealing sector for robotics applications. ... In recent decades, agri-tech companies have been investing in ...
What’s a ‘food fraud vulnerability assessment’?
Food fraud is the intentional and deliberate substitution, addition, tampering, or misrepresentation of food products, food ingredients, and food packaging ...
Fungus ‘meat’? Yes, it could be a less expensive, environmentally sustainable —and tasty— chicken substitute
Chinese scientists have genetically tweaked a fungus to make protein-rich “meat”, which they say can be a low-cost, environmentally friendly alternative ...
Viewpoint: Fake news about Italy’s 2023 ‘unenforceable’ ban on lab grown meat reignites fact-twisted furor
Italy passed a law banning cultivated or cell-based meat years ago, but posts online suggesting that it has just happened ...
