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: ‘Regulation through litigation’ — Activist groups team up with lawyers to sway government regulations
Speaking at the annual meeting of Southern Cotton Growers/Southeastern Cotton Ginners Association Jan. 21 at the Marriott Myrtle Beach Grand ...
Making moths avoid apples? Gene-edited bio-pesticides in development
William Walker of the Agricultural Research Service laboratory in Wapato, Washington, has three projects underway that aim to use genetic ...
Great-tasting heirloom wine grape varieties can survive climate change with CRISPR gene-editing
The winters that climate change is bringing — ones that are milder on average, but still experience drops to extreme cold — ...
Viewpoint: Green activist alarmism is starving drought-stricken Africa
Kenya wants its farmers to grow pest-resistant, drought-tolerant corn, as pests devour much of its corn crop, and Kenya faces its worst drought ...
Cell-based? Lab-grown? Synthetic? Budding cultured meat industry needs global standardized nomenclature
What would you call a food that’s made by cultivating animal cells in a tank? Is it still “steak” or ...
Misinformation on GM crops and improved seeds hurting Kenyan farmers and hungry citizens
Rose Rono has lived and farmed in Limuru, Kiambu County, in Central Kenya for the last 10 years. In a ...
Deforestation can drive outbreaks as dangerous viruses spread from wildlife to people. Here’s how to minimize the threat of spillovers
Researchers have shown that deforestation can drive outbreaks by bringing people closer to wildlife, which can shed dangerous viruses. Scientists ...
Which cotton is more sustainable: Organic or conventionally-grown and genetically modified? No easy answers
Organic cotton is produced without synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, and with non-genetically modified seeds. The use of fewer synthetic pesticides ...
99.8%: Rebuffing Environmental Working Group’s ‘Dirty Dozen’ pesticide claims, EPA says almost all fruits and vegetables are safe
We often talk about how government data shows over 99.8% of foods sampled are well below Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) safety standards, commonly referred ...
Fearful of bans on genetically modified grains, Canada joins US in requesting formal trade talks with Mexico
Canada asked for formal consultations with Mexico over the Latin American nation’s restrictions on genetically modified agricultural imports under their ...
Letter to the US Department of Agriculture: Look to biotechnology for innovation
To provide input to the federal government as USDA submits its report in March on how to use biotechnology and ...
As record-breaking drought persists, legal battle rages over approving GMO grain in Kenya
The record-breaking drought is forcing Kenya to confront a controversial topic: whether the country should grow genetically modified (GM) crops ...
20 years ago, Zambia ‘shocked the world’ by rejecting free corn to feed its starving population, claiming safety concerns because it was genetically modified. That freeze is thawing.
In 2002, President Levy Mwanawasa shocked the world when he declined to receive GMO maize from the United States of ...
Nearly all soy and corn exporters plant genetically modified seeds. Why, so far, is there a dearth of GM wheat?
Nearly all corn and soybean acres in the world's largest exporting countries are seeded with genetically modified varieties, but that ...
Climate disruptions are eroding the quality of rice. Here is how gene-editing could protect one of the world’s most important staples
A review of gene editing techniques suggests that the CRISPR/Cas (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/Cas) method could be a ...
Viewpoint: Small plot African farmers should not be denied access to benefits of genetically modified crops
South African farmers who have been early adopters of genetically modified (GM) seed technology are in the fortunate position of ...
Leather jacket look-alikes made from shrimp shells? Check out this biomaterial innovation made from ‘chitosan’
TômTex’s model aims to tackle two problems at once: finding biodegradable materials for garment manufacturers and upcycling mountains of marine ...
‘Mexico’s current biotechnology trajectory is not grounded in science’: USDA Secretary Vilsack on Mexico’s plan to ban imports of genetically modified corn, claiming possible health and environmental hazards
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack issued the following statement regarding the March 6 announcement by the Office of the U.S ...
Breeding better cattle? Genetic screening becomes widespread
Traditionally animal breeders would select animals based on their physical characteristics, such as body weight, milk production or size. However, ...
Bucking popular skepticism, China rolls out GMO corn as global food security pressures loom
China will likely plant less than 1% of its corn fields with genetically modified varieties this year, said two people ...
Here’s how gene editing could save the beloved Cavendish banana from extinction
US-based Elo Life Systems, a biotech company targeting food sustainability, is tapping into gene-editing to save Cavendish bananas from a ...
$1.25 for a gallon of carbon-neutral gasoline? How sewer sludge and other bio-waste could provide cheap energy
Mark Holtzapple is a professor at Texas A&M University in the Mcferrin Department of Chemical Engineering. He's spent most of ...
Here’s how Kenya is inching its way into the biotechnology revolution in agriculture
The biotech research community in Kenya heaved with relief when the government lifted a decade-old ban on genetically modified organisms ...
Large-scale solution to climate change? Living Carbon plants first genetically modified trees in US forest
Living Carbon’s poplars start their lives in a lab in Hayward, Calif. There, biologists tinker with how the trees conduct ...
Metabolic engineering: Genetically-modified tomatoes that reduce inflammation developed in Japan
Scientists from the Tokyo University of Science and the Iwate Biotechnology Research Center have engineered potato and tomato plants to ...
Regulating lab meat: While the European Union drags its feet, Singapore and the US develop regulatory models for assessments and approvals
Both the US and Singapore have seen cultivated meat products pass through their regulatory processes, yet the two governments approach ...
Viewpoint: As New York debates limiting neonicotinoid pesticides, farmer explains how ban would escalate spraying of more hazardous chemicals
I’ve been growing grapes, cherries, and other crops for 45 years in western New York. I grew up on a ...
