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.
Should we eat less red meat? There’s no solid evidence behind that advice, dietary expert panel says
Public health officials for years have urged Americans to limit consumption of red meat and processed meats because of concerns ...
EU Parliament environment committee challenges recent GMO crop approvals, citing seed company ‘market domination’
The Environment Committee in the European Parliament voted against the approval of genetically modified maize and soybean varieties. [The committee ...
Turkish scientist gets 15-month prison sentence after publishing study that links chemicals in food and water in western Turkey to cancer
A Turkish food engineer and human rights activist was sentenced .... to 15 months in jail after publishing the results ...
Viewpoint: EU does world’s GMO, CRISPR crop research but blocks implementation while other nations benefit from the technology
The story of agricultural biotechnology in the EU started with high hopes and expectations 25 years ago, when Belgian Professor ...
The coming ‘vegan economy’? Billion-dollar plant-based food industry rushes to satisfy eco-conscious consumers
Veganism is on the rise. The phenomenon has spawned a burgeoning industry in alternatives to animal-derived products that’s already worth ...
Nestle expands glyphosate testing on imported coffee as trials feed Roundup-cancer scare
Nestle SA is increasing checks on the coffee it buys, after recent tests showed beans from some countries had levels ...
AI-powered devices deliver ‘micro-dose’ of herbicide to cut agriculture’s chemical use
Above a Saskatchewan field, a line of drones rises in formation, sensors primed to pick out enemy targets below. But ...
McDonald’s teams up with Beyond Meat to test plant-based burger in Canada
McDonald's is teaming up with Beyond Meat. On [September 26], the fast-food giant announced that it will partner with Beyond ...
Wait, corn is a fruit? Yes—here’s the biology that explains why
We all know the is-a-tomato-a-fruit debate (correct answer: yes, but you still shouldn’t put it in a fruit salad). Now ...
Can controlled burns crack down on herbicide-resistant weeds?
Weeds are thieves. They steal nutrients, sunlight and water from our food crops. In the case of sugarcane, yield refers ...
Newly discovered genes could help develop natural ‘antibiotic cocktails’ to battle plant disease
Yezhang Ding, Alisa Huffaker, and Eric Schmelz of the University of California San Diego and their colleagues have developed a ...
Drought resistant farming breakthrough: GMO corn survives nearly two months without water thanks to tomato genes, in field study
The intense desert to the south of the Coquimbo Region in Chile makes molecular biologist Simón Ruiz think about how ...
Nigeria needs GMO crops to boost food security, promote food safety, government says
Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, Minister of Science and Technology, announced that the Federal Government (FG) of Nigeria is working hard in ...
US ‘Insect Allies’ program engineers bugs to fight plant disease: Are they high-tech helpers or horrific threats?
Scientists dream of one day being able to construct viruses or bacteria from a collection of building blocks. Like a ...
AI-powered smartphone app helps safeguard African staple crops against climate change
A new artificial intelligence (AI) tool available for free in a smartphone app can predict near-term crop productivity for farmers ...
Viewpoint: Growing GMO crops provides 4 major health benefits you probably didn’t know about
While the application of agricultural chemicals is highly mechanized in industrial countries, the same cannot be said for developing countries, ...
German government, farm group face off over impact of potential glyphosate ban
The German agriculture ministry strenuously rubbished a claim by farmers association DBV that the country’s new insect protection plan, which ...
Viewpoint: Why farm to table organic food campaigns are ‘bunk’
[T]here is big money in making consumers feel ecologically pure and big money to be lost if a certain brand ...
Sorghum gene could help cut massive crop damage caused by birds without harming them
A single gene in sorghum controls bird feeding behavior by simultaneously regulating the production of bad-tasting molecules and attractive volatiles, ...
Could drought-tolerant seeds save East Africa’s sunflower production?
Climate change has brought more droughts to Tanzania. This not only affects the cultivation of sunflowers, but also the production ...
High-yielding desert crops? Soil-free growing system could boost food security in world’s arid regions
A lush, green mat of fresh animal fodder is an unlikely sight in the harsh Sahara Desert, but a project ...
‘Abstinence vs. innovation’: What Amazon fires can teach us about GMO, CRISPR-edited crops
The Amazon rainforest fire debate is another edition of “abstinence vs. innovation” (here’s the aviation edition). Global agro-consumption and demand for ...
CRISPR gene editing poised to streamline next ‘agricultural revolution,’ plant scientists say
As a growing population and climate change threaten food security, researchers around the world are working to overcome the challenges ...
Viewpoint: GMO Impossible Whopper can help save the planet—and lots of cows
[In September] I stepped inside a Burger King for the first time in three years. I wanted to try out ...
North American bird populations dropped 30% over 50 years, but causes hard to ‘pin down’
North America’s birds are disappearing from the skies at a rate that’s shocking even to ornithologists. Since the 1970s, the ...
Infographic: USDA data reveal dramatic growth of GMO crop adoption in US since 1996
Herbicide-tolerant (HT) crops, which tolerate potent herbicides (such as glyphosate, glufosinate, and dicamba), provide farmers with a broad variety of ...
Despite glyphosate-cancer legal battle, farmers defend their use of Roundup
The faith that American farmers .... have in Roundup is what prompted the German company Bayer to spend $63 billion ...
