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.
Obama endorses biotechnology’s important role in agriculture
The dedication of Dr. Norman Borlaug's statue in the U.S. Capitol last month brought together an amazing array of Democrats ...
Indian prime minister asserts support for GM crop trials
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh can be assertive when he chooses to. He has certainly imposed his will on the government ...
Pre-conceived beliefs about food labels can be as important as labels themselves
What we believe about a food's ingredients may have a biological effect on our bodies above and beyond the actual nutrient content. That ...
Growing confidence in GM crops in Africa
There is a sense of growing confidence in genetically modified crops as 18 million farmers have planted over 175 million ...
Does a GMO label make scientific sense for sugar beets? Ag scientist says ‘no’
As a scientist, I cannot understand how anyone can think GMO labeling makes sense. To be fair, I have identified ...
China GMO debate mirrors US divide
On March 30, the Hainan Provincial Agricultural Department released a statement on its website, saying that nine corn and cotton ...
Genetic engineering can save Mexico’s limes, but will we accept them?
If you are not a regular consumer of Mexican cuisine or gin and tonics, you may not have noticed that ...
Cornell researcher confirms Bangladesh Bt eggplant farms free of pest damage
While visiting Bangladesh to conduct environmental safety assessments for Bt brinjal and help farmers develop resistant management programs to ensure ...
GMOs woven into the fabric of everyday life
Let’s face it that the GMO war in Hawaii is still raging on with Maui on the hit list right ...
Would you trust science or a yogic flying instructor with your food?
Professional forester and writer Norm Benson recently got a healthy dose of anti-science environmentalism, because he wrote an article endorsing a ...
U.S. corn exports to China dwindle because of GMOs
China’s tougher stance on imports of genetically modified corn is roiling U.S. agribusiness, largely halting trade in the biggest U.S ...
Infographic: Debating the ethics of ‘Golden Rice’
Professor Krishna Mallick of Salem State University debates the ethics of Golden Rice in an infographic. The infographic was prepared ...
GE technology is necessary, not just for potato blight
UK’s leading Permaculture author Patrick Whitefield and SkeptEco blogger Graham Strouts recently exchanged a few tweets about genetically modifying potatoes ...
US-EU divide over GMO regulations worth fixing
Last week, I found myself sitting in an auditorium in Brussels—and listening to Europeans applaud genetically modified crops. Yet it ...
India’s rice industry says GMO rice trials would damage export prospects
India's rice exporters have expressed concern over allowing large-scale field trials of the crop's genetically modified (GM) version, saying it ...
Sterilized GM mosquitoes released in largest field test to combat dengue in Brazil
In Jacobina, a Brazilian farm town where legions of people have suffered from dengue fever, a campaign is fighting back, ...
Claim that most countries other than US ban GMOs myth debunked
Have you heard the line about GMOs being banned in all other countries? It's the old argument that if every ...
10 realizations to change thinking about GMOs
When I first started learning about GMOs, my model was trans fats and vitamin supplements. We thought that we could ...
GM grass ban rejected in Connecticut after House and Senate split
On Thursday, less than 24 hours after the Senate approved a bill banning genetically modified grass seed, the House found bipartisan agreement ...
Food industry claim New York’s GMO labeling bill would cost consumers
Legislation is pending before the state Legislature to require GMO labeling on all food products. Sound reasonable? Maybe, but not ...
Maui anti-GMO campaigners petition with 9,500 signatures, pro-GMO groups hold their ground
A total of 9,500 signatures were submitted to the county on Monday as part of a petition calling for the ...
Confronting fear of genetic modification, a life-saving technology
GMO Skepti-Forum has begun featuring essays by readers on the GMO controversy. We’re going to be featuring some of them on the ...
Bill introduced in US Congress that would block mandatory GMO food labeling by states
State efforts to label genetically-modified food would be outlawed under a bill unveiled by a Kansas congressman Wednesday – a ...
Vitamin A-deficient children need Golden Rice now, everything else is noise
There is a need for what Golden Rice can deliver: vitamin A. According to the World Health Organization an estimated ...
No logic in giving up GMO food production for organic
So what is “organic,” really? To look at this question, it can be easier to start with what is not ...
Maui protestors fear GMOs and chemicals except when it’s not convenient
Last week Sunday was yet another march against biotechnology on Maui. There were quite a bit of pictures and videos ...
GM mosquitoes can control mosquito menace, if politics doesn’t block development
Mosquito-borne diseases kill millions of people annually, and cause suffering for many more. It takes only one bite from a disease-carrying ...
