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.
U.S. issues formal complaint over Mexico’s GM corn and herbicide ban as Mexico concludes ‘science’ reviews alleging human health and safety risks
United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai [June 2] announced that the United States has requested dispute settlement consultations with Mexico ...
Viewpoint: How Canadian activists are exploiting tort law to try to ban one of the safest herbicides available to farmers
The green campaign to ban glyphosate is a global co-ordinated effort, but in Canada the war on the pesticide is led ...
Viewpoint: Greenpeace’s ongoing campaign against Golden Rice is taking nutritious foods from the mouths of children
Every year, hundreds of thousands of children suffer from visual impairment and health problems due to vitamin A deficiency. The ...
France sugar beet production hits 14-year low, analysts blame neonicotinoid pesticide ban
Sugar beet production in the EU is closely watched as sugar prices in the bloc are already trading near record ...
Can lab-grown leather production be scaled up to meet massive materials demand of industry?
Tyneside biotech business 3D Bio-Tissues say we are just a few years away from lab-grown leather goods after creating animal ...
Rice is in trouble: A new generation of CRISPR varietals may be the only remedy as climate change escalates
Rice is in trouble as Earth heats up, threatening the food and livelihood of billions of people. Sometimes there’s not ...
Viewpoint: Kenya is the world epicenter for misinformation about agricultural biotechnology. Here’s why this needs to change
Kenyan Opposition leader and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga recently criticised the government's move to import genetically modified (GM) maize ...
Why salt-tolerant crops could reduce massive drain on limited fresh water reserves
Despite years of effort and advances in understanding how salinity tolerance works in plants, very few salt-tolerant crops have been ...
What’s the best science-based method for promoting a sustainable global food system amidst biodiversity loss, rising populations and climate change?
Producing food is terrible for the environment. According to the online scientific publication Our World in Data, agriculture is responsible ...
Will cloning disease-resistant indigenous cows rescue the milk-producing market in India?
All births are special, but Ganga's was a milestone. This Gir calf born on March 16 this year is the ...
How long before lab-grown fish slows down overfishing?
A team of researchers at Zhejiang University has grown China’s first centimetre-long fish fillets in the laboratory ...
Viewpoint: ‘Rejecting the luxury green beliefs of the privileged West’ — Why developing countries are rebelling against Greenpeace’s anti-technology policies
On May 19, the Moscow Times announced the closure of Greenpeace Russia following the government authorities’ decision to label it “undesirable,” ...
Can we create GMO crops to address climate change and enhance nutrition — yet avoid transgenic labeling and the restrictions that come with it?
Academic researchers and companies in the agricultural biotechnology sector will be able to use a patent-pending Purdue University biology innovation ...
Kenya upholds ban on GMO crop importation
The Attorney General (AG9) has lost a bid to have orders stopping the importation of genetically modified foods (GMO) suspended ...
St. Louis jury hands Bayer seventh straight win in defense of Roundup, concluding weedkiller not responsible for gardener’s lymphoma
A spokesperson for Bayer said that a St. Louis County jury's ruling on May 23 in its favor was consistent ...
Viewpoint: Cure is worse than the alleged disease? Why New York’s proposed ban on neonicotinoid-coated seeds will lead to increased use of harmful pesticides
Farmers feed us and our families. They sustain us, and, as a crop consultant, I have the privilege of assisting ...
Microplastics are widespread across our food supply. Are they a health hazard?
A new study by CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, is one of the first to analyze the available academic literature ...
Viewpoint: The politics of farming affects every American. Here’s why agriculture will be the next presidential election’s big issue
Whether it’s Mexico’s threat of banning the import of American corn, or the five-year revamp of the American Farm Bill, ...
Mythinformation: ‘Fear campaigns from anti-biotech NGOs make it a challenge to even keep products on the market let alone introduce new technologies’
Technological innovations in plant breeding can address serious issues from climate resilience to biodiversity decline to sustainable intensification to feed ...
Here’s why much-maligned glyphosate and herbicide-resistant crops are critical to sustainable farming
A newly publicized study by researchers with the University of Saskatchewan confirms what many farmers already knew ...
Cell-based meat: Why the FDA’s cultivated chicken safety clearance is only the first step in popularizing what many consumers still consider ‘just a lab experiment’
Last fall, cultivated-meat company Upside Foods became the first in the U.S. to be viewed as safe for human consumption ...
Why do people respond to diets differently? Study on a million Americans probes impact of biology, lifestyle and gut microbiome
There's plenty of one-size-fits-all nutrition advice. But there's mounting evidence that people respond differently to food, given differences in biology, ...
Baby formula shortage crisis: Lab-cultivated human breast milk could fill gaps in ‘vulnerable’ formula supply chains
In 2020, in a nondescript office building in Durham, North Carolina, a team of scientists used cells to recreate sugar and ...
Viewpoint: Less stress, more energy, better digestion? Why expensive ‘superfood powders’ aren’t better than eating your veggies
You’ve probably noticed ads for these “superfood powders” scattered across social media or on your favorite podcast ...
USDA promotes new rules to improve seed industry competition and enhance resiliency of America’s food supply chains
On March 6, 2023, the United States Department of Agriculture ("USDA") released a new report: "More and Better Choices for ...
What do ‘sustainable’ and ‘humane’ food labels mean?
Americans tend to think that the farmed animals we eat were treated better than they actually were. In one 2017 survey, ...
Mexican argument that corn ban does no harm meets US opposition
The Mexican government continues to minimize U.S. concerns over President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's restriction on genetically modified white corn, ...
