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.
USAID’s funding freeze on blight-resistant GM potato research in Ethiopia could have grave consequences
Researchers are left in limbo as they await funding for a genetically modified potato project that lost its financing as ...
Easy-to-use, biodegradable plant-based pesticide detector in development could provide an extra layer of food safety
Brazilian researchers have created a sensor that can be attached to the skin of fruits and vegetables to check for harmful ...
Changing livestock diets: Here’s how crickets will help address agricultural sustainability challenges
During the late summer and early fall, you can hear the commotion in a customized, food-grade shipping container on the ...
Viewpoint: ‘Villainous’ methane-burping cows may be part of an integrated solution to climate change
Beef and dairy cattle have been demonised by many as one of the main causes of increased green house gas ...
Religious Muslims cleared to consume lab-grown beef if origins of cells are from ‘humanely-killed’ cows
Lab-grown meat is a rising trend among those looking to reduce their carbon footprint ...
Grow in the dark vertical farming? Here’s how gene-editing could allow crops to grow without light
Startup Square Roots announces a new program to prove that light can removed from a commercial vertical farming system and ...
Organic is not for everyone: Availability and affordability limit organic produce to higher-income households
One of the major reasons why people aren’t buying into organic food products is the lack of availability, particularly in ...
Viewpoint: Some Republican-governed states want to ban or limit sales of cell-cultivated meat. Here’s why that’s a bad idea
At the end of January, Florida’s House and the Senate Agriculture Committee approved a bill introduced by Republican Rep. Danny ...
Post-apocalyptic farming? How seaweed could help us avert starvation during a nuclear winter
A nuclear war would plunge our planet into a deep nuclear winter. In the worst-case scenario, a nuclear exchange... could ...
Beverages, meats, fruits and vegetables: CRISPR poised to offer more sustainable alternatives
Although vegetarian and vegan diets have risen in popularity over the years, humankind’s appetite for meat is still insatiable. By ...
US food is pesticide free: Latest USDA report finds 99+% of 23 conventionally-grown fruits, vegetables and grains test below hazard benchmarks
The USDA has published the 2022 Pesticide Data Program Annual Summary, which shows that over 99% of the samples tested had ...
Viewpoint: While African nations embrace GM and gene-edited crops to address climate change challenges, EU lags further behind, even as food prices soar
While some richer nations dither over how to deal with biotech farming innovations, scientists in lower and middle income countries are ...
Livestock industry targets Florida in campaign to block cultivated meat innovation
If Florida bans cultivated meat, it will be the first in the nation to do so. With food scarcity challenging ...
Australian glyphosate cancer litigation: Judge poised to rule on the country’s first weedkiller case
An Australian court on January 29 heard closing arguments in a class action lawsuit alleging that a weedkiller produced by ...
Challenging the anti-GMO ‘foreign gene’ Frankenfood myth: Crops ‘steal’ genes from other species to accelerate evolution
Research, led by the University of Sheffield, is the first to show that grasses can incorporate DNA from other species ...
Hybrid seafood? Shrimp added to expanding roster of 3D printed, cultivated seafood products
Israeli startup Steakholder Foods has added a 3D-printed shrimp prototype to an expanding roster of alternative seafood products. The company ...
Viewpoint: Why do some people readily believe climate scientists but reject the view of crop geneticists? Austrian survey provides some clues
Fortunately, vaccine and climate skeptics prefer to hang out on social media, but not – at least at the moment ...
In face of diminishing freshwater resources, new gene-edited tomato variety can withstand droughts without compromising yields
A new discovery by Tel Aviv University has succeeded in cultivating and characterizing tomato varieties with higher water use efficiency ...
Gene-edited fungus-resistant rice variety slated for field trials, first genetically-engineered crop trial in Italy nearly 20 years
For the first time in almost 20 years, a new entry appeared in the public database that lists proposals to test ...
Bill Gates and bug-eating: Conspiracy theory claims billionaire wants to replace cattle industry with insect protein. What’s the truth?
“Bill Gates wants to get rid of the cattle industry, and have people eat his FAKE MEAT,” writes one commenter, ...
China reverses course, authorizes genetically modified corn and soybeans to wean itself off western imports
China is about to start growing genetically modified crops, and that has me wondering what it will mean for its ...
Are we making an ‘inevitable shift’ to plant-based and cultured meat? Here are 8 alternative protein predictions for 2024
Here are the biggest trends to look out for as the alternative protein sector aims to further enshrine itself in ...
African countries turn toward home-engineered gene edited crops to ensure regional acceptance
Molecular biologist Steven Runo once thought that his team would make history as the first to plant gene-edited seeds in African soil ...
‘Insects are perfect machines’: Bug-mimicking tiny robots can pollinate crops, lift many times their weight
Insects are the “perfect machines,” faster and stronger than humans relative to size, [Conor Trygstad] said. They are also tasty ...
Lab-cultured eel alternative to an over-fished delicacy? Israel-Japan partnership looks to 2025 launch
Forsea Foods, the only known company working on cell-based eel, has created the first prototype of its cultivated eel. The ...
Viewpoint: Who is behind reactionary European movement to hobble lab grown meat revolution?
Vienna, Paris and Rome, along with nine other EU countries, are set to argue that meat grown in a laboratory ...
Bayer to appeal $2.25 billion judgment that its glyphosate weedkiller caused worker’s cancer
Bayer was ordered on January 26 to pay $2.25 billion to a Pennsylvania man who said he developed cancer from ...
