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.
Viewpoint: Propaganda ring blurs science and feeds ‘toxic tort’ industry targeting Roundup and aspartame
The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) cherry picks evidence, declares something is likely, probably, or ...
Understanding links between energy and agriculture
My parents were Calabrian. During the first half of the 20th century, my father was an orange picker and a ...
Viewpoint: Why proposed PFAS chemical bans might do more harm than good
News broke last month that 3M has agreed to pay out $10.3 billion in settlement payments in response to lawsuits ...
Viewpoint: Sustainable, natural, chemical, toxic — Words used by activists to label agriculture can distort science and turn the public against sensible farming
Reality is perceived by the definitions we give; the black and white lines we draw upon a grey canvas. So, ...
Synthetic alcohol: Booze with all the buzz — but without the hangover?
What if you could indulge in your favorite cocktails with no hangover or other ill effects? ...
What makes ‘ultra-processed food’ so unhealthy?
A recent analysis by the Access to Nutrition Initiative finds about 70% of food products sold in the U.S. are unhealthy — ...
Traits found in roots of desert plants could help crops survive escalating droughts due to climate change
Germinating Arabidopsis (thale cress) and alfalfa with a microbe taken from the roots of a common desert plant has been ...
A feast for bioengineered yeast? How leftover agricultural waste can be transformed into bioplastics, pharmaceuticals and fuel
Yeast has been used for thousands of years in the production of beer and wine and for adding fluff and ...
Bioengineer or die: The genetically-engineered toolkit plants need to survive a climate-changed future
Climate change is affecting the types of plant varieties we can cultivate, as well as how and where we can ...
Genetic mutation that makes apple trees grow like weeping willows could make laborers’ lives easier
Plant geneticists have identified a mutation in a gene that causes the “weeping” architecture – branches growing downwards – in ...
From beer hops to tropical cocktails, we are beginning to see a spectacular explosion of flavors and smells, thanks to genetic modification
Someday the flavors and smells added to most foods and drinks could be created in yeast-brewing tanks rather than extracted from plants ...
Challenging food protectionism: Understanding what’s stifling precision fermentation and cellular agriculture movements
“There is an enormously bright future for precision fermentation and cellular agriculture; the efficiencies alone make that true,” Bill Liao, ...
Untapped renewable energy: Roasting cast-off pistachio shells
Pistachios, a popular snack worldwide, generate a substantial amount of waste in the form of hard shells. Typically, these shells ...
Pineapple scraps don’t have to go to waste — they can be used to make bioplastics
A collaborative research between universities in Thailand and Malaysia have developed a unique kind of bioplastic sheet using pineapple stems from ...
Future food: Carbon-neutral chicken, 3-D printed cake and 8 other foods likely to be on your plates soon
Here are 10 products coming soon to your plates that are set to redefine our gastronomic experiences. Plant scientists at ...
Another AI task: Addressing global hunger and food security
Producing what we need to eat puts an enormous burden on both the climate and the environment. Yet, at the same time, ...
Viewpoint: Canadian government incentives to boost agricultural sustainability lags while billions are given away to high-tech ventures. Here’s why that needs to change
This federal government appears to look at almost every decision through a climate change lens. For better or worse, Ottawa ...
$6.2 billion: That’s how much will soon be spent each year to test seeds and food for signs of genetic modification
According to a new report published by Allied Market Research, titled, “GMO Testing Market," The GMO Testing Market Size was ...
In surprise finding, transition to organic farming leads to decline in bats – at least temporarily
Organic food without pesticides, hormones, fertilizers, herbicides, antibiotics, artificial chemicals, and genetically modified organisms is regarded by many as being better ...
Viewpoint: Outdated organic fanaticism holds back agricultural sustainability — Recent head of Swiss-based Research Institute for Organic says organic embrace of gene-editing would end ‘polarization’
The EU plans to exempt techniques such as CRISPR from the strict restrictions on green genetic engineering, provided that the ...
90% adults fall short of eating their daily recommended vegetables. Could gene-edited salad greens make a difference?
A food and agriculture startup called Pairwise developed CRISPR-edited vegetables to make them more palatable. They created a breed of ...
‘More than just eating bugs’: Future proteins made from fungi, algae, and bacteria offer sustainable alternatives to current global diet
Would you eat a burger enriched with mealworms? Fake bacon sliced from a mass of fermented fungi? Milk proteins extruded ...
Hunger and malnutrition are soaring in Africa. There is a helpful solution: GM crops
Hunger and undernourishment are two elements of food insecurity that have plagued Africa for years. And the menace is growing ...
Feeding China’s gargantuan meat appetite releases gigatons of carbon. Could cultured meat address soaring demand and climate disruptions?
The largest protein markets in Asia need to massively scale up their adoption of novel meat substitutes in the coming ...
Here’s how to capture carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — and why it’s so important
Carbon sequestration is the process of capturing atmospheric carbon dioxide — the most commonly produced greenhouse gas — and storing it in ...
Downside of the amateur beekeeper craze: Honeybees are not endangered and raising them reduces food availability for native bee species
It's morning on a City of London rooftop. But that rooftop itself is a little oasis: a tennis court-sized patch ...
Combining AI and CRISPR: Gene-edited hardwood trees increase carbon sink potential of deep forests
Researchers are using the revolutionary gene-editing technology CRISPR to breed unique, pulp-abundant poplar trees that, as laid out in a study ...
