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.
Monsanto says biotech wheat moves closer to market
Monsanto, the world's largest seed company, said Wednesday it was making good progress on development of an herbicide-tolerant wheat, pushing ...
Sustainability rethink needed: GM farming promotes dangerous ‘externalities’
In the last 20 years, the development of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for the agriculture industry has resulted in a ...
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, ...
Agriculture scientists support approving GM Arctic Apple but face resistance
An apple genetically engineered not to turn brown is putting the Agriculture Department and the apple industry on the spot ...
Developing world food crisis: Can hungry countries afford to say ‘no’ to GM crops?
In many countries GM crops are not accepted because they are thought to be unsafe for both human health and ...
GMO labeling push will propel certified organic market
The struggle over GMO labeling will push the growth of certified organic products in the US in 2014, according to ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
