Food & Ag Features
The GLP explores the role of genetic engineering in food production and the polarized debate surrounding it. We highlight the work of our own writers, as well as that of contributors from around the Web. The GLP does not take a position on genetics-related issues; any opinions expressed belong to the authors.
Categories include:
- Chemicals and pesticides
- Organics
- Conventional crops
- New breeding technologies
- Animal biotechnology
- Food systems
- Sustainability
- Regulations
- Politics
- Ideology
Viewpoint: MAHA’s chemophobic agriculture recommendations take a back seat to industry and science as Republican farm policy comes into focus
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has courted controversy his whole life. Since becoming the Trump administration’s top health official, Kennedy’s outlandish ...
Viewpoint: Wall Street and private equity—The hidden money bankrolling class action tort cases, from glyphosate to talc to Zantac
Have you ever wondered how lawyers manage to bankroll mass toxic tort cases, which are notoriously expensive to finance? Spoiler ...
Misguided MAHA: Its vision of transforming American agriculture would increase food prices, habitat loss, and emissions
Earlier this spring, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. walked the rows of John Sawyer’s Texas farm, the young corn brushing against ...
Chestnuts, rats, and rhinos: Can biotechnology become a key tool in conservation?
What do the American Chestnut tree, the black rat, and the northern white rhinoceros have in common? They are all ...
Viewpoint: Despite environmental activist claims, bird and insect populations are not crashing in Britain
The scientific evidence increasingly refutes the alarmist narrative that our farmland bird and insect populations are disappearing due to intensive ...
Mutant advantages: Constant change in plant breeding — random and now guided — has precisely crafted our global food system
A new review paper by researchers at Bayer Crop Science, titled Beautiful and delicious mutants: The origins, fates, and benefits of ...
Viewpoint: The organic food industry is a $180 billion marketing fraud
As a biomedical scientist, it has never failed to annoy me that the term ‘organic’ has been co-opted to spread ...
Foodomics: Why you need to know what’s in ‘nutritional dark matter’
When scientists cracked the human genome in – sequencing the entire genetic code of a human being – many expected ...
Sugar-sweetened beverages: The health impact of soda, sweetened waters, fruit drinks, coffee and other SSBs
Sugar-sweetened beverages, the liquid delight promising a moment of joy and delivering a lifetime (?) of regret. Positioned as a ...
Can magic mushrooms slow aging?
A groundbreaking study in Nature’s npj Aging Journal (July 2025), just made waves by showing that psilocybin, the psychedelic compound ...
Viewpoint: The fastest growing delusion in America is chemophobia—and organic marketers are to blame
“Organic” might be the most abused word in the English language. Chemists, farmers, and marketers all use it—and none of ...
For food companies, GMO was a dirty word. Innovation in gene editing is soaring, changing the public discussion
The BBC reported that scientists at the University of Oxford, working in a collaboration with other international partners, have used ...
Personalized nutrition: Can AI design a healthy, allergen-free diet?
In just three months, ChatGPT will turn three, and it’s already reshaping the way we work, think, and even imagine ...
RFK, Jr.’s claim that food additives cause ADHD is more scare-mongering than science
Robert F. Kennedy Jr has spent years railing against food additives, framing them as part of a broader threat to public health ...
Did you hear the story about the GMO that nearly destroyed the world?
An old myth has resurfaced that a GMO almost destroyed all life on Earth — but what's the real story? ...
GLP podcast: Spread meat allergy with gene-edited ticks? Bioethicists pose vile ‘thought experiment’
How far are we willing to go to slow climate change? The list of proposed solutions runs the gamut from ...
How gene editing of farm animals could help prevent a COVID-like bird flu epidemic
During a Westminster Hall debate in Parliament ..., former Defra Secretary Rt Hon Steve Barclay MP joined a growing list of political, ...
Viewpoint: Farmers take a hit—Trump agriculture and biotechnology budget cuts are hampering U.S. innovation
Imagine a world where crops thrive with less water and fewer pesticides, where livestock resist disease without antibiotics, and where ...
Viewpoint: Trump’s agricultural maelstrom: While U.S. agricultural output lags, opportunities for reform are being wasted
American agricultural leadership is being put to the test. Farmers are grappling with high input costs, non-tariff trade barriers, and ...
Viewpoint — ‘Less food waste, lower carbon footprints and a socially sensitive food system’: Tech-enabled farming intensification is the only science-based path to sustainability
Several trends become quickly apparent when we engage the public about agriculture. Consumers across the industrialized world reject concepts like ...
GLP podcast: ‘Toxic’ baby food? Dismantling another tort-lawyer health scam
A few months ago, a law firm emailed one of us (Cameron) asking for help promoting their litigation against baby ...
Viewpoint: ‘A conveyor belt of agenda-driven science’: NPR’s anti-aquaculture hit piece is bought and paid for by activists
National Public Radio (NPR), once a beacon of earnest, if occasionally sanctimonious, reporting, has sunk to a new low, as ...
Trump’s EPA will stop collecting emissions data from most polluting companies
The Environmental Protection Agency is planning to eliminate long-standing requirements for polluters to collect and report their emissions of the heat-trapping ...
The less you know, the more you cockily believe you’re right: The Dunning-Kruger Effect sustains agricultural misinformation
The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a cognitive bias where individuals with limited knowledge or skills in a specific area tend to ...
Can native and conventional crops coexist with GM and gene-edited varieties? The case of Honduras
Over the last several years, it’s been more than evident there is an urgent need to increase food production at ...
GLP podcast: Three phony health fads making your wallet lighter
"It really implies risk when there is none." That's how geneticist and farmer Kevin Folta summarizes the fatal flaw behind ...
Viewpoint: ‘Trump may need to ignore RFK, Jr. on food the way he does on energy, or he’s going to send a lot of his voters into bankruptcy’
Until the 1980s, the modern-day Malthus acolytes like Drs. Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren predicted Population Bombs and advocated for ...
