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.
Plant-based Burger King whopper heads to Sweden, sans key GMO ‘Impossible’ ingredient
.... Burger King [began] selling a new plant-based burger in Sweden [on May 23]. [T]he new menu offering [is] “a ...
Viewpoint: Burkina Faso’s declining cotton yields illustrate need for GMO crops
At a forum on biotech crops and the Big Four Agenda at the University of Nairobi on April 24, critics ...
Bayer trial: Judge picks high-profile attorney Ken Feinberg to mediate Roundup-cancer settlement negotiations
A U.S. judge overseeing Roundup-cancer lawsuits against Bayer AG provisionally appointed high-profile mediator Ken Feinberg to lead settlement negotiations over ...
Organic food sales at $48 billion, now almost 6% of food, despite continued decline in market growth rate
Sales of organic food in the U.S. last year totaled a record $47.9 billion — 5.9% higher than 2017, according ...
Vinegar, Epsom salts, Dawn weed killer mix superior ‘organic’ alternatives to synthetic herbicides? ‘Nonsense,’ gardening expert says
You know, the most wonderful thing about social media and the internet is that everything you read there is true! ...
As orange growers battle citrus greening disease with antibiotics, should we fear ‘super bugs’?
A pernicious disease is eating away at Roy Petteway’s orange trees. The bacterial infection, transmitted by a tiny winged insect ...
‘Nature’s pest controllers’: How wasps reduce chemical pesticide use in farming
Scientists have put together a map of the UK's wasp population, showing the distribution of key species. Data recorded by ...
United Nations: Intensive agriculture driving bee declines, threatening global food security
Declining bee populations pose threat to global food security and nutrition FAO urges countries to step up efforts to protect ...
Glyphosate-tainted burgers? Impossible Foods rebuffs Moms Across America’s latest anti-GMO campaign
“Moms Across America” has escalated a year-long campaign against Impossible Foods to push its anti-vaccine, anti-GMO agenda to anyone gullible ...
Open-source gene expression platform could yield more efficient food, biofuel crops
An open-source RNA analysis platform has been successfully used on plant cells for the first time -- a breakthrough that ...
Consumers want to buy from ethical companies, but interest in non-GMO, organic labels dropping, survey shows
A survey conducted by Crestline Custom Promotional Products showed 68.3% of American consumers want to support companies that promote similar ...
Market for agricultural robots expected to hit $87.9 billion by 2025
A new report by market analysts and consultants Tractica has said that global shipments of robots designed for agricultural use ...
Wall Street Journal: Costly glyphosate-cancer legal battle one of ‘worst crises’ in Bayer’s 155-year history
Stuck in one of the worst crises in its 155-year history, Bayer AG, the German company that invented aspirin and ...
With Burger King plant-based whopper available nationwide, meatless meat ‘here to stay’
Gone are the days when vegan meat was derided as tasteless — a sacrifice vegetarians made in service of a ...
‘Ultra-processed’ food may boost weight gain, first randomized controlled trial shows
People eating ultra-processed foods ate more calories and gained more weight than when they ate a minimally processed diet, according ...
Afraid of GMOs? Thousands of studies, strict regulations show there’s nothing to fear, farmer says
GMOs have been widely misunderstood. People are concerned about their health and the environment (and they should be worried about ...
Viewpoint: How ‘insect Armageddon’ stories erode public trust in science
When I was growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, long before we spent our evenings drawn to the soft glow of ...
Why biotech firms are jumping into the cannabis business
As biotechnology embraces the legal cannabis industry, not a few of its executives are grappling with a dilemma: what will ...
Chickens don’t want to be ‘free range,’ they prefer being indoors, Australian government veterinarians says
Do chickens really like being free-range? It seems like a dumb question. Who wouldn't like a big green paddock full ...
Decoded small hive beetle genome could help control invasive honeybee parasite
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service have deciphered the genome of a serious threat to honeybees ...
What might be Bayer’s defense if one of the glyphosate cancer verdicts end up at the Supreme Court?
Bayer AG plans to argue that a $2 billion jury award and thousands of U.S. lawsuits claiming its glyphosate-based weed ...
USDA launches genomics ‘blueprint’ initiative to enhance sustainable farming as global food demand booms
A new U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) blueprint, published [May 16] in Frontiers and Genetics, will serve as a guide for ...
Brexit could free UK farmers to embrace CRISPR-edited crops, help meet global food demand, says UK former food and agricultural secretary
UK farming has been held back by the hostility of the EU to new technology, which is causing European research ...
Viewpoint: Let’s change how we farm and eat to stop ‘climate breakdown’
My spirits have been lifted by Greta Thunberg, the school climate strikers, Extinction Rebellion, and – perhaps most strikingly – ...
Viewpoint: India’s GMO Bt eggplant ban drives farmers to buy black market biotech seeds
Bt brinjal [is] being illegally cultivated in the country—the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources has just confirmed this for ...
GMO chestnut trees could help revitalize New York’s Native American communities
The American chestnut once dominated the eastern forests of the United States. A fungal pathogen, Cryphonectria parasitica, was introduced to ...
Bayer to appeal $2 billion glyphosate-cancer verdict with EPA Roundup assessment excluded from trial
Bayer plans to make the EPA’s safety endorsement of a chemical in Roundup central to its case as the company ...
