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.
Aristolochic acids: Natural insecticides found in medicinal plants cause of mysterious kidney disease?
The plant, Aristolochia clematitis—more commonly known as birthwort—can surely be called beautiful, but within it lurks a poison. Over the ...
EPA proposes herbicide tiafenacil as ‘low-risk’ alternative to control glyphosate-tolerant weeds
EPA proposes tiafenacil for pre-plant and pre-emergence burndown use in corn (all types except sweet corn), cotton, soybeans and wheat ...
GMO herbicide-tolerant canola poses no hazard to human health, EU food safety officials find
Following the submission of application EFSA‐GMO‐RX‐002 .... from Monsanto Company, the Panel on Genetically Modified Organisms of EFSA (GMO) was ...
Viewpoint: Agro-ecology agendas are trapping African farmers in poverty
Rather than helping to address food insecurity, the agro-ecological agenda may in fact be trapping African farmers in poverty. That’s ...
Facing decimated yields, French sugar-beet growers demand access to banned neonicotinoid insecticides
Since April, the beet yellows virus has destroyed a large part of France's sugar beet harvest, including nearly 50% of ...
China could crack down on fall armyworm pest invasion with GMO insect-resistant Bt corn
Due to its wide host range, high reproductive and dispersal capacity, the fall armyworm (FAW), Spodoptera frugiperda (J.E. Smith), which ...
Gene-edited crops that ‘communicate with environment’ could launch next green revolution
Researchers at the Institute of Network Biology in Germany and their colleagues .... published a study in Nature showing that ...
Next Impossible Burger? Investors pour $1.4 billion into lab-grown meat, microbial protein development
Hoping to find the next Beyond Meat, venture investors have more than doubled their bets on alternative protein makers this ...
132 research institutes press Europe to embrace CRISPR crops
The European Sustainable Agriculture through Genome Editing (EU-SAGE) network and its members from 132 European research institutes and associations urge ...
Bayer appeals $265 million dicamba weedkiller verdict, alleging damage to Missouri peach farm exaggerated
Bayer AG sent a private investigator [in July] to evaluate the business of a U.S. peach grower who won a ...
Farmworkers’ group, nine states urge federal court to ban widely used insecticide chlorpyrifos
Farmworker advocates squared off with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency before a remote Ninth Circuit panel [July 28], arguing the ...
Glyphosate weedkiller unlikely to impact ovarian function, studies find
Exposure to the chemical glyphosate changed the level of some ovarian proteins in mice but did not impact ovarian steroid ...
Kenya close to eradicating locust infestations, but resurgence possible before end of 2020, UN warns
Kenya is likely to become free from desert locusts in the near future thanks to roll-out of robust containment measures, ...
What’s the future of GMOs in Europe? Global food security in the midst of COVID. Watch Webinar Wed Jul 29, 10AM ET w/Sonny Perdue and Jon Entine
If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it's that we can't take food security for granted. As the "heart ...
Harvard Law School urges USDA to allow ‘usual meat and poultry terms’ in labeling of cell-based foods
In some action on the petition front, USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) acknowledges a request from the Harvard ...
Preventing spread of parasites, not cutting pesticide use, key to protecting bees
For as long as beekeeping records have been kept, 1,100 years, there have been accounts of colony collapse disorder. Just ...
Viewpoint: Bogus glyphosate-cancer litigation undermines legitimate product safety lawsuits
Nearly every American was taught the same six steps that serve as a fundamental building block to scientific education: Make ...
Despite past warnings from Fidel Castro, Cuba green lights GMO crop cultivation amidst severe food shortages
Cuba officially opened the door to GM crops on [July 23] as a “complement to conventional agriculture”, in the midst ...
‘Greenwashing’: Does plant-based marketing mislead consumers about sustainability?
"Greenwashing” is the term used to describe the promotion of a product based on misleading claims of superiority to other ...
Agricultural technology key to protecting nature and preventing pandemics
Scientists are urging governments across the globe to adopt technology to reduce agriculture’s impact on the environment and slow the ...
Nanotechnology helps farmers battle drought, pests but GMO rules could slow adoption
Agriculture is responsible for 75% of global deforestation, 70% of water consumption and 30% of greenhouse gas emissions. The expected ...
EPA ordered to review impact of glyphosate-based herbicides on monarch butterflies—but federal court blocks ban
A Ninth Circuit panel ruled against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on [July 22], finding the agency must take a ...
GMO ‘halo effect’: How biotech crops benefit farmers who don’t grow them
Agricultural Economist Graham Brookes of PG Economics is the latest featured expert in the ISAAA Webinar series. His talk focused ...
Pandemic postpones Florida Keys’ decision on releasing GMO mosquitoes until August
The five-member commission of the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District voted unanimously to postpone a decision on the experiment for ...
More meat with less environmental impact? CRISPR and one gene change could improve the sustainability of beef production
Scientists at the University of California, Davis, have successfully produced a bull calf, named Cosmo, who was genome-edited as an ...
Bayer launches carbon capture program to support ‘eco-friendly’ farming
Bayer AG launched a pilot program in the United States and Brazil on [July 21] that will pay farmers for ...
EU environmental groups say proposed pesticide rules would ‘water down’ protection for pollinators
EU countries .... expressed their preference for a way of regulating potentially bee-harming pesticides that has been contested by environmental ...
