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.
Are Europeans too cautious about science?
At the end of a hard year Europe’s leaders are grappling with familiar problems—how to revive gasping economies, what to do ...
Behind the Label: ‘Non-GMO verified’
Many food companies are seeking certification that their products don’t have any genetically modified ingredients, and not just the brands ...
Will synbio foods win over consumers?
Only two out of 10 Americans are willing to give lab meat – animal tissue grown without a living host ...
Genetic engineering of food not magic bullet, but important tool
Ronald J. Herring, professor of government and international professor of agriculture and rural development at Cornell University, US, believes that ...
How should public seed banks guard genetic wealth?
There was a news report not so long ago that ICRISAT (International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics), an ...
China removes ban on U.S. genetically-modified corn imports
China bought as much as 900,000 metric tons of a corn-based grain from the U.S. after the government was said to ...
Precision mutagenesis: Are new genome crop editing technologies more ‘natural’?
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Over the past 10,000 ...
Psst, Congress, you have a little food stuck in your Cromnibus
Congress has just passed the so-called Cromnibus — a giant $1.1 trillion spending bill to keep government programs running. Last year, ...
Costa Rica considers ban on GMO crops
A Legislative Assembly commission on agriculture on Tuesday will begin discussing a bill that would place a moratorium on the production of genetically modified crops ...
Organic strawberries in California are still grown with pesticides
After our investigation revealed just how much dangerous pesticides it takes to grow strawberries, many people wrote to us saying they ...
Nigeria’s agri-biotech development trails South Africa, others
Nigeria is lagging behind in the agricultural biotechnology revolution as other African nations leap forward in its adoption, resulting in ...
Uganda’s GMO products ready for release in 2016 with no law yet in place
In this quest for improved varieties with the capacity to give high yields and other desired attributes such as drought ...
Regulatory hurdles may blunt future of open source GMO crops as patent expires for GMO soybeans
The development, testing, and regulation of genetically engineered crops usually takes a significant investment of time and resources, so these ...
Ethiopian enset: Can native plants be improved for economic viability?
Ethiopians have cultivated enset—a cousin of the banana tree—for thousands of years, converting its stalk, roots and leaves into food, ...
Would genetically modified salmon be considered kosher?
Many of us in this era of ecologically motivated dietary restrictions find ourselves editing our menu choices, but I wondered ...
Will synthetic biology face same fate as GMOs?
On a cold weekend last month, more than two thousand undergraduate scientists took over two levels of Boston’s Hynes Convention ...
Australian organics board reaffirms zero tolerance for GMOs
The group responsible for setting organic standards has rejected an application by the Western Australian Agriculture Department to allow a ...
Syngenta expects Chinese to OK GM corn embroiled in lawsuits
Syngenta AG expects to win Chinese government approval soon for imports of a type of genetically modified corn at the ...
Nicaraguan enviro activists say GMOs would not alleviate drought crisis
A severe four-month drought during this year's “wet” season in Nicaragua hit agricultural production in two-thirds of the country’s 153 municipalities ...
Raw organic milk implicated in death of Australian child
Mountain View Organic are a food marketing company with high flown rhetoric about 'kind farming and good health practices". Mountain ...
21 European scientists call for public support of GMOs
In an open letter released last month, 21 out of the 27 most cited plant scientists in Europe pledged decision makers ...
Patent ending for first major GM crop, Roundup Ready soy, new era of open source GMO seeds
I argued in my 2013 book, The Infinite Resource, that the “seeds shouldn’t be patented” argument against GMOs and specifically against ...
Golden rice will not solve malnutrition or biodiversity loss
Golden rice is a product of genetically modified technology that is offered as a solution to vitamin D deficiency for ...
Deflating claims of oft-quoted anti-GMO activist Jeffrey Smith
Bucolic Fairfield, Iowa is home to Genetic-ID, a company founded by John Fagan to test crops and foodstuffs for ingredients ...
Are organic farms more drought resistant?
The supposed productivity gaps between organic and conventional farming may be a lot smaller than thought, according to a new analysis ...
Nassim Taleb is wrong: Black Swan more likely for non-GMO food than GM varieties
Much has been written about Nassim Taleb's coauthored paper arguing that the precautionary principle dictates that we should avoid GMOs because of ...
Why is LA trying to ban GMO crops?
Even if you hate the idea of genetically modified food, you would gain nothing from a Los Angeles City Council ...
