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.
Pakistan working to formulate ‘national biotechnology policy’
Pakistan's Ministry of National Food Security has started the process to formulate a ‘national biotechnology policy’, and was working on ...
Would you prefer to eat genetically modified eggs, or see day-old chicks destroyed?
World egg production industries rely on a single sex only (female), with the males generally disposed of by carbon dioxide ...
Why the Gates Foundation wants to make Golden Rice
Imagine if you could prevent hundreds of millions of children from suffering malnutrition maladies such as blindness, stunting, poor health ...
Is there a farmer and consumer backlash against GM crops?
Most US consumers say they want genetically modified food labelled (it isn't) and believe that they don't eat GM food ...
Russia moves to legitimize GM seed imports, spur research
Russia has introduced a registration system for foods containing genetically modified organisms that could drag the illegal import of genetically modified seeds ...
Food First anti-GMO activist Lappé challenges Grist’s coverage of GMOs as naive
If you’ve been reading the running commentary over at Grist for the past six months, journalist Nathanael Johnson has been opining about ...
Panama to use GM mosquitoes to battle deadly dengue
Two weeks ago, Panama declared a dengue outbreak, that up to that point, had affected more than 3,100 people and killed ...
U.S. agriculture can change the GMO conversation
Despite the head start biotechnology opponents have, there’s still plenty of opportunity for farmers, ranchers and the biotechnology industry to ...
An example of how much pesticides have changed
The pesticides that farmers use to protect their crops have changed a great deal over the last few decades. While ...
Sustainability case for GE crops
The public debate about food has become deafening. "Local" and "organic" are mantras of the organic lobby, but organic food ...
Grist for the genetic engineering mill
A “what I’ve learned about GMOs” (“genetically modified organisms”) end-of-the-year column by Nathanael Johnson, Grist’s food writer, would ordinarily not warrant much attention ...
China vows ‘active, cautious’ GMO food stance
With the safety certificates for China's GMO rice and corn expiring soon, the country will take an "active and cautious" policy ...
Massive data do not support Don Huber’s GMO/glyphosate pathogen claims
Anti-GMO figure Don Huber, Emeritus Professor of Plant Pathology at Purdue University, has stirred quite a bit of controversy as ...
The fable of Hawaiian ‘Frankencorn’
Hawaii is the epicenter of a furious campaign to shut down production farms that yield genetically modified seed. It was ...
Organic food and farm groups ask Obama to require GMO food labels
Four U.S. lawmakers joined with more than 200 food companies, organic farming groups, health and environment organizations and other groups on Thursday ...
Kenya to lift ban, commercialize GMOs
Kenyan Education, Science and Technology Cabinet Secretary Jacob Kaimenyi has revealed plans by the government to lift a ban on Genetically ...
Uganda: ActionAid, other NGOs face scrutiny for false claims that GMOs cause cancer, infertility
Last November, the National Agricultural Research Organization (Naro) took concrete steps towards beating off any opposition to the draft bio-technology ...
Addressing belief that organic farming uses fewer/less harmful ‘natural’ pesticides
Go shopping in any large supermarket in a Western country and you are likely to find yourself bombarded with enticements ...
Social benefits of biotech crops
Ask any sugarbeet grower in the US how their lives have changed since the commercialization of Roundup Ready beets. Really ...
Ex FDA official analyzes industry draft GMO labeling and ‘natural’ proposal
It might have enraged those in favor of mandatory GMO labeling, but a leaked document outlining the Grocery Manufacturers Association’s ...
Weighing the plusses and minuses of GMO labeling
The most visible and contentious debate in our food supply is undoubtedly over labeling of genetically modified organisms. In the ...
Pro and Anti GMO forces spar in Hawaii
State Senator Russell Ruderman used his own company’s letterhead when he submitted anti-GMO testimony recently to the Hawaii County Council ...
Deadly bacteria could put an end to Florida orange juice
For years, Florida orange farmers have been fighting an incurable bacterial infection that threatens the very existence of the state's ...
State of the planet: GMOs not just about crops
While much attention is focused on genetically modified foods and the debate over their safety, fewer people are aware that many ...
China cloning on an ‘industrial scale’
Fast-growing Chinese company BGI is not only the world's largest center for gene sequencing, it's also the world's largest center for cloning ...
Biotech crop opponents slowing federal approval
The opposition to biotech crops is slowing the approval by U.S. regulators of new genetically modified products that is hurting ...
Hostility to GM putting EU in ‘global slow lane’
The growing influence of green lobbyists and anti-capitalists on European policymaking is condemning the EU the ‘global slow lane’ when ...
