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.
How anti-GMO activists sell India ‘suicide seeds’ narrative
Over the past decade, the story of hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers being driven to suicide because of the failure of ...
10 reasons why anti-GMO and anti-vaccination movement are alike
The anti-GMO movements and anti-vaccination movements are probably two of the biggest and most well known pseudoscience movements out there, ...
Why I’m still skeptical of GMOs
Over the weekend, listservs, blogs, and Twitter feeds lit up with reactions to Amy Harmon's New York Times deep dive into the politics ...
Why Ghana needs crop biotechnology
Ghana is at the cross roads, debating the introduction of genetically modified crops (commonly referred to as GM crops) into ...
Bt cotton attracting young farmers in India
Contrary to the perception that youngsters are abandoning farming, Bt cotton technology has attracted young farmers to cotton farming in the country, ...
Angry mob more frightening than GMOs
The Frankenstein metaphor that opponents of genetically modified food use to promote their fears is more apt than they realize ...
UK minister: Europe risks becoming ‘Museum of World Farming’ if it votes no on GM corn
Britain's farm minister called on the European Union to approve a strain of genetically modified maize in a vote later ...
Frankenpolitics: The Left defense of GMOs
The global movement against genetic modification, it is fair to say, does in general spring from the green left side ...
Lessons learned from the Séralini affair
Last year a group of French scientists led by Dr. Gilles-Eric Séralini reported in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology ...
‘Jumping genes’ may explain why coffee bean boring beetles are so destructive
Tiny beetles that bore into coffee beans to lay their eggs and do $500 million of damage annually to coffee ...
GMOs key for future, according to China’s ‘father of hybrid rice’
Yuan Longping, the “father of hybrid rice,” recently spoke about his ongoing research into genetically modified food production, calling the ...
GM plants could yield same amount of omega-3s as fish
British researchers say they've been able to genetically modify a biofuel crop to produce components of fish oils beneficial for ...
Most Americans pay little attention to GMOs
A national survey shows that most Americans pay little attention to the debate over genetically modified foods, despite extensive media ...
Overcoming the stigma surrounding GMOs
In August, at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, a group of activists vandalized test fields of so-called ...
Liberals v. Science: As Hawaiians debate GMOs, local legislator committed to science is ostracized
In November, after months of rancorous debate, the County Council on the Big Island voted to ban biotech companies and ...
US bioeconomy 2.5% of GDP, and booming
The bioeconomy continues to emerge as a significant component of the U.S. economy. Domestic revenues from genetically modified systems are ...
Food, genes and the feeling of risk
Riffing off of breaking news about General Mills announcent that it had dumped GMOs from its iconic Cheerios, Andrew Revkin ...
New Hampshire debates GMO labeling: Restaurant nightmare will jump costs and prices
A bill before the New Hampshire House of Representatives — HB 660 — will make it harder for struggling families ...
Chinese celebrities knock heads in GMO debate
The debate has heated up since Cui Yongyuan, a well-known former China Central Television (CCTV) host, claimed he spent 500,000 ...
More myths dispelled about GMOs creating food allergies
Kevin Bonham, a Scientific American blogger and graduate student working on a PhD in the Immunology Program at Harvard, where ...
Indy Hawaii study downplays atrazine dangers, shows flaws in Kaua’i bill
Last year, the Kaua'i County Council passed BIll 2491, legislation designed to restrict genetically modified crops while also targeting some ...
How plants evolved to cope with cold
In a study that appeared last week in Nature, researchers have found new clues to how plants evolved to withstand ...
Video: China faces political dilemma regarding GM drought resistant rice tested as safe
A number of leading scientists in China are preparing a proposal for the State Council to approve the commercial production ...
Nepalese activist official launches anti-GMO volley
Binyod Acharya, an official with a National Tea and Coffee Development Board in Nepal, launched a broadside against GMOs, accusing ...
Bt sweet corn yields higher, require less pesticides, cuts bioseafety costs
The only GE fruits and vegetables commercially available are virus-resistant papaya and squash, and insect-resistant sweet corn. With their diverse ...
Napa Valley may push for GMO labels
While California voters rejected a ballot initiative that would label foods containing genetically modified organisms just over a year ago, ...
Genetic defect in tomatoes tweaked to increase yields, fruitiness in canned varieties
Teasing out the hidden subtleties of a type of hybrid vigor involving just one gene has provided scientists at Cold Springs ...
