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.
Is lab-grown food ‘Frankenstein stuff’? Biggest challenge is not ‘food fears’ or consumer resistance, but scale and cost
Remilk, founded in 2019, is producing the key functional ingredients of milk using a yeast-based fermentation process. Yeast normally produces ...
Viewpoint: How Russian-Ukraine war and looming global food shortages underscore absurdity of Europe’s unsustainable ‘green’ Farm-to-Fork policy
The war [in Ukraine] has served as a wake-up call for the EU, heavily dependent on Ukraine's grain and Russia's ...
GMO microbes that eat pollution? How biotechnology can sustainably cleanse our water
Limiting PFAS in wastewater will be a challenge. After all, these substances do not break down in the environment. At ...
Positively disruptive technology: Argentina debates the mostly pros and few cons of genetically modified crops
Drought has hit the economies of South America and has ruinous consequences for agricultural production. A possible solution to such losses – ...
Higher prices for meat, milk and eggs? Increased greenhouse gas emissions? Study documents sustainability drawbacks of non-GMO animal feed
Continued demand for non-GMO feed for livestock will increase greenhouse gas emissions on farms, and raise consumer prices for meat, ...
‘Meat the Future’: Jane Goodall-narrated documentary explores future of cell-grown ‘clean meat’
In Meat the Future, streaming on most major platforms starting this week, we meet a team of scientists led by cardiac ...
Viewpoint: Let’s take a hard look at ‘popular wisdom’ that glyphosate poses health dangers
In 2017, [Davis, California city] council voted to eliminate the application of glyphosate by the end of 2020 in “high ...
Viewpoint: ‘Pesticide choice should be about what works and what doesn’t’ — Challenging claims that organics are superior because they use ‘natural’ chemicals
Witness organics. Despite little evidence of its supposed merits, devotees will steadfastly defend their “team.” It’s widely touted in marketing ...
Brazil doubles production of insect-resistant GMO sugarcane over past year with new variety for poor soil in the wings
Brazilian farmers are set to nearly double the area planted with transgenic sugarcane in the season starting this month, the ...
Farm student addresses concerns raised about GMO crops and food
As the population continues to grow, more and more people are living in urban areas that lack, or do not ...
Viewpoint: A science-backed case in support of organic farming
Conventional or intensive farming and gardening is dominated by monocultures – fields of crop plants and nothing else. These are ...
Malawi farmers claim 100% yield boost using insect-resistant Bt cotton
The National Commission for Science and Technology (NCST) says Bt cotton – a genetically modified variety – has improved farmers’ ...
Academic study: EU’s Farm-to-Fork would lead to higher prices and lower production
The [Farm to Fork, or] F2F strategy, as part of the [European Green Deal, or] EGD, reduces the production of ...
Giraffe meat? Bengal tiger burgers? Start-up using cell cultures to create exotic new tastes without harming animals
Cultivated meat companies most frequently focus on the largest meat categories- beef, chicken and pork. However, Primeval Foods has stepped ...
With Ukraine’s corn crop endangered by war, European farmers turn to GMO feed
European farmers are set to buy more genetically modified animal feed from the U.S. and South America after Russia’s invasion ...
How nutrients in food impact genes and influence your health
People typically think of food as calories, energy and sustenance. However, the latest evidence suggests that food also “talks” to ...
Viewpoint: ‘There are more dangerous chemicals under your kitchen sink than the ‘demon’ glyphosate’ — Here’s why the world’s most popular herbicide is safe
Glyphosate, which is sold as Roundup, often makes the headlines as being the demon pesticide and the cause of all ...
Mushroom handbags? Synthetic biology is expanding into the fashion industry
The fashion industry’s expectations are particularly high. “Nobody is willing to sacrifice quality and performance for sustainability,” says Matt Scullin, ...
Video: Here’s the story of the pioneering purple nutrition-enhanced genetically modified tomato—and why GMOs are the future of food
Plant geneticist Cathie Martin spent years working with snapdragon genes to create a purple tomato that produces more antioxidant compounds ...
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? In the near future, maybe neither
Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? This eternally-confounding question now has an answer—that is, if just the egg ...
Viewpoint: Why scientists and health experts believe you can ignore the Environmental Working Groups’s Dirty Dozen list
[The Center for Food Safety just released its 2022 Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce ‘Dirty Dozen’ list of ‘unsafe’ ...
How sustainable is North American soybean production?
In the past 50 years or so, the cultivation of soybeans has grown tenfold, with the UN’s Food and Agriculture ...
GMO soil fungi: One way genetically modified barley might help reduce the need for fertilizers
A field trial of genetically modified and gene-edited barley is due to be planted this April. The research is evaluating ...
Viewpoint: Reversing the Green Revolution — Why Europe’s ‘Farm to Fork’ policy will increase hunger
After destroying European energy independence, environmentalists are now focusing on their next goal: the destruction of your supermarket. This is ...
Viewpoint: ‘Organic’? ‘Regenerative’? On labels they are little more than buzzwords. Here’s why
Natural, sustainable, organic: yesterday’s news. When it comes to virtuous eating, “regenerative” is the buzzword du jour. But what, exactly, ...
Age of eco-terrorism: Why are activists attacking the most productive part of our food industry — modern agriculture?
The attack on a grain train by activists hostile to what they call “agro-industry” on March 19 in Brittany, France ...
Viewpoint: How Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen undermines healthy food consumption
To be able to “vote with your fork” is a privilege that not everyone has, and the “Dirty Dozen” list ...
