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.
Cotton Board of Zambia calls for investments in biotech to aid sustained production of quality cotton
Cotton Board of Zambia board secretary Dafulin Kaonga said Government should invest in modern biotechnology, including genetic engineering, to develop ...
Scientific literacy and critical thinking missing from anti-GMO groups
The landscape of science communication resounds with a cacophony of credible and incredible voices. Such voices fill the demands of ...
Biotech can strengthen vegetarianism but Veg Expo chooses anti-GMO agenda
Most people never knew I was not a meat eater. I enjoyed an ovo-lacto vegetarian diet for 16 years. I get the ...
Media reports on Vermont’s GMO labeling bill lacked science, framed emotionally
Even as the ultra-green Grist magazine has sought to give its fervent readers a more nuanced conversation about genetically modified ...
East African Community prioritizes GMO regulation, calls for public education and awareness
The East African Community is working on fast-tracking a proposed harmonized policy on Biosafety as a key priority. This will ...
Third-generation Indian cotton farmer relates first-hand experience with non-Bt and Bt cotton
GMO Skepti-Forum has begun featuring essays by readers on the GMO controversy. We’re going to be featuring some of them on the ...
Scientists and farmers reject proposed GM crop ban in Jackson, Oregon, call it ‘threat’ to agriculture
The idea of banning genetically modified plants seems like folly to some scientists who work in crop technology, not to ...
Organic groups fight propagation of Golden Rice in Philippines to protect native varieties
Several environmental groups have raised the alarm against golden rice, a genetically modified variety, that threatened “to destroy the organic ...
Politics behind farmer suicide claims in India
As politicians scramble for India’s 815 million votes in the most expensive and closely contested general election in the nation’s history, ...
‘Food Babe’ promotes misinformation on food, GMOs
Did you know that the calcium pill you may be popping contains the same chemical found in gravestones? What are these ...
Vermont’s GMO-labeling bill faces tough First Amendment challenges
Legal experts say the Vermont bill requiring foods produced with genetic engineering to be labeled that now just needs Governor Peter ...
Reuters, other science reporters often promote ‘false balance’ on GMO safety studies
GMO coverage in the media today is where climate change reporting was from the late 1980s until the early 2000s, ...
What are the differences in genetically engineering crops and drugs?
When you google GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) the results that come up speak to GM crops, but GMOs are more ...
Five farmers on why they use GM technology
A hot topic grabbing headlines recently is GMOs. The technology behind GMOs is fairly new, quite sophisticated and basically misunderstood by the masses. Many ...
Court challenge looms as Vermont legislature passes law requiring GMO labeling by 2016
The movement against genetically modified crops scored a signal victory Wednesday, as the Vermont legislature passed a bill that would ...
Australian government push back on anti-vaccine sentiments needs to be repeated for GMO resistance
Imagine that a group of advocates tried to alert the public to a danger they perceived, only the evidence showed ...
Did the Washington Post ‘overstate’ ‘marker-assisted’ breeding method?
A recent Washington Post article by Adrian Higgins, titled, “Trait by trait, plant scientists swiftly weed out bad seeds through marker-assisted breeding” ...
General Mills expresses support for agricultural biotechnology despite removing GMOs from Cheerios
General Mills recently released its 2014 Global Responsibility report in which it affirmed biotechnology as key to addressing feeding a ...
Chipotle’s aggressive anti-GMO stance helps boost earnings
Lost amid the swirl of attention showered on Chipotle Mexican Grill's first price hike in three years is the news that ...
GMO debate rages in Tanzania
Some people talk against genetically modified (GM) products, particularly food, as if it’s a matter of choice between evil and ...
Philippines NGO claims Golden Rice poses economic threat to organic farmers
The contamination of organic rice from the genetically modified Golden Rice poses an economic threat to many organic farmers in ...
Academics Review: Organic food industry engaged in ‘multi-decade public disinformation campaign’
Consumers have spent years paying over the odds for organic foods based on the erroneous belief - promulgated by stakeholders ...
Biofuels from corn residue worse than gasoline for climate change in short term
Biofuels made from the leftovers of harvested corn plants are worse than gasoline for global warming in the short term, ...
Glyphosate dangers in breast milk challenged as ‘junk science’
On April 7, 2014 a television “documentary” in Australia reported that a study of 10 nursing mother’s milk revealed the presence ...
Academics debate what GMO labeling policy should look like
Mark Edelman, professor of economics at Iowa State University, and Barry Flinchbaugh, emeritus professor of agricultural economics at Kansas State ...
Poor pay for the affluent’s misplaced anxiety over GMOs
I wrote several papers on the political economy of agricultural biotechnology that analyzes the opposition and support of GM. The ...
‘Organic mommy mafia’ pushes foods based on misleading claims of health and nutrition
“Am I going to be an outcast?” A friend, who recently moved to an upscale neighborhood in Madison, Wis., called ...
