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.
Consistent global regulations essential to bring cell-based meat into the mainstream
Singapore's historical approval of cell-based meat late last year spurred industry momentum, but there remains a lack of clarity on ...
UN’s ambitious biodiversity plan puts ‘regenerative agriculture’ at the forefront
Eliminating plastic pollution, reducing pesticide use by two-thirds, halving the rate of invasive species introduction and eliminating $500bn (£360bn) of ...
Biodynamic farming advocate makes the case for transforming fashion with regenerative agriculture
Fashion’s detrimental environmental impact should not be news to any of us. However, what is perhaps not so well known ...
Crispy plant-based bacon is the alternative protein ‘holy grail’
[Beyond Meat’s] burgers, meatballs, sausage links and other plant-based meat products are projected to generate more than $500 million in ...
Gene editing poised to spark innovation in herbicide- and disease-resistant sugar cane
Sugarcane is one of the most productive plants on Earth, providing 80 percent of the sugar and 30 percent of ...
Viewpoint: ‘Greens’ around the world declare themselves ‘pro-science’. But on health and sustainability issues, from vaccines to energy to farming, they are anything but
The Greens present themselves as the party of science. In reality, the party traditionally stands for an anti-science course, despite ...
Does the public have an appetite for lab-cultivated meat?
Laboratory grown muscle cells from various animals are quickly becoming a commercial reality; they are already real food, at least ...
‘All positives’: 17 years after GM corn introduction, the Philippines shows sharp increase in output and household incomes — with the poor benefiting the most
Genetically modified yellow corn has increasingly been used in the Philippines since 2002. In just a period of 17 years, ...
Viewpoint: Anti-biotechnology activists harshly criticize Gates Foundation funding of African agricultural initiatives
Africans have long been told that our agriculture is backward and should be abandoned for a 21st-century version of the ...
Bird flu is a major threat to chicken farming and human health. A gene-editing solution developed by African scientists is in the works
Dr. [Alewo Idoko-Akoh], a research fellow at the University of Edinburgh, is working on a project that uses genome editing ...
Turning waste into energy: Could biotechnology tackle a major tradeoff problem of modern agriculture?
For decades now, bioenergy has been posited as a renewable and clean source of energy. Biomass, particularly from forestry, is ...
‘Digital agriculture has the power to be truly disruptive’: How AI and robotics are helping Japan overcome land challenges and dramatically increase farm yields
Japan has one of the lowest food self-sufficiency rates out of all the major world economies. Caloric intake was 79% ...
Fact check: No, product codes do not identify genetically modified produce
"Want to know where your food and/or products come from?" asks a June 22, 2021 Instagram post. Identical posts, claiming ...
Viewpoint: ‘Europe has abandoned science-based assessments’ — Kenya and the rest of Africa face economic devastation, mass starvation if they adopt proposal to ban all products banned in the EU
It is hard to remember any decision that posed harm to Kenya as much as the recommendation before Parliament that ...
Pork is central to China’s culture and cuisine. It’s also under dire threat from swine fever. Here’s how lab-grown meat could rescue this iconic food
Pork is big business in China, the only country in the world to have its own dedicated pork reserve. The ...
Viewpoint: Outcomes over ideology — Why biotechnology innovations like pesticides and GM crops are essential tools in advancing regenerative agriculture
We hear a lot about regenerative agriculture these days, but everyone has their own definition of what this term means ...
Viewpoint: ‘Well intentioned’ Sri Lankan plan to embrace organic farming tainted by lack of science, damaging its economy, health, and food security
In Sri Lanka, world renowned for its tea production, an initiative to go all-organic — the textbook definition of a ...
With droughts escalating, and no current tools of use, scientists and farmers look to CRISPR gene editing
Scientists fear that we're entering a megadrought that could last decades. As agriculture consumes 80 percent of available water nationwide ...
Video: Good intentions aren’t enough — Attempts to protect wild bees has gone awry and an influx of imported honeybees are doing more harm than good to native populations
Ron Miksha, a bee ecologist and former commercial beekeeper, is doing research at the University of Calgary about competition between ...
Nigeria moves forward with nitrogen-efficient GMO rice
Still basking in the euphoria of commercializing sub-Saharan Africa’s first genetically modified (GM) food crop — insect-resistant cowpea —Nigeria has ...
Viewpoint: Harvard fellow on why crop engineering is crucial to addressing food security and growing sustainability challenges
We routinely assume that “natural” is better than “unnatural” when it comes to food. But it is more complex than ...
Viewpoint: ‘Glyphosate is socially dead’ — While every major government regulator in the world finds the herbicide safe, politicians have caved to activists, and farmers are the victims
The specialist authorities from France, Sweden, Hungary and the Netherlands have come to a clear conclusion when it comes to ...
African scientists have created a CRISPR-edited banana that’s resistant to a disease ravaging farms across the continent
Banana xanthomonas wilt (BXW) is a bacterial disease that spreads easily and kills any banana plant it infects — farmers' ...
Viewpoint: Hard truths about regenerative agriculture — When marketing hype is embraced as policy
Words like artisan, craft, sustainable, and now regenerative are used to promise something better to the consumer, but at the ...
CRISPR gene drives have been deployed in plants — opening the way to breeding resilient crops better able to withstand drought and disease
With a goal of breeding resilient crops that are better able to withstand drought and disease, University of California San ...
Viewpoint: How does the scientifically bankrupt claim glyphosate poses harm to humans remain popular? By dishonest ‘reporting,’ including from scientists who put ideology over evidence
The Conversation bills itself as a website designed to “Unlock the knowledge of researchers and academics to provide the public with ...
Russia positions itself as a world leader in genetically edited cows
Researchers from Ernst Federal Science Center for Animal Husbandry, Skoltech, Moscow State University and their colleagues have produced the first ...
