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.
Washington Post dietitian: Environmental Working Group, activists irresponsibly fan fears by citing ‘scary-sounding’ but harmless chemicals in food
Would you worry if you knew your food contained sucrose octanoate esters or tocopherols? They might sound frightening, but don’t ...
May election offers Europe chance to embrace gene editing and ‘smart agriculture,’ boost sustainable farming
On May 26, Europeans will be able to vote to elect new MEPs. This election will no doubt provide an ...
Roundup on trial: Cancer cases plateaued while glyphosate use exploded, Bayer expert witness testifies
Alva Pilliod’s lymphoma likely had no known cause, but his singularly abnormal immune system allowed it to flourish, an oncologist ...
‘Silent crisis’? UN report warns agriculture, overfishing accelerate biodiversity declines
The world's most comprehensive, and damning, report on the state of nature [was released May 6] in Paris. The UN's ...
Consumers embrace non-GMO products in attempt to manage health through food choices
.... [A]bout a quarter of adults are trying to manage a health or medical condition through their food and beverage ...
Patricia Nanteza is Uganda’s agricultural biotechnology communications queen
You go to the annual National Agricultural Show in Jinja and she is there. You go to the Harvest Money ...
As IARC glyphosate-cancer finding draws more scrutiny, WHO rebukes agency for ‘undermining’ other UN chemical safety assessments
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) was once a serious, revered organization with the somber task of tackling ...
EPA requests public comment on activist proposal to cut glyphosate tolerance in oats
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is asking for public feedback on a petition by a national environmental research and advocacy ...
Video: John Innes Centre battles nutrient deficiency with iron-fortified biotech wheat
Iron is an important micro-nutrient, boosting haemoglobin levels in the blood. Many populations and particularly women and children are currently ...
Viewpoint: Europe’s ‘de facto’ GMO crop ban, mandatory labeling scheme ‘hinder innovation’
An excellent new paper from a trio of Danish researchers, two of whom are based out of the University of Copenhagen, argues that the European ...
Steep prices push lab-grown meat makers to pitch products as ‘humane luxuries’
[M]akers of cultured meat, such as Memphis Meats, New Age Meats and Aleph Farms, face several barriers to bringing their ...
Will weed-killing robots replace controversial herbicides on the farm?
Weeds are the bane of a farmer’s existence—the “most important of all crop pests,” as one scientist put it. They ...
Indian farmers grow illegal insect-resistant Bt eggplant to control destructive pests, as government lags on approval
Farmers in Haryana and experts fear widespread contamination of genetically modified (GM) brinjal or eggplant in the state with a ...
Viewpoint: ‘Political populism’ dictates Europe’s bureaucratic anti-GMO crop rules
As individuals, we’re able to decide whether a single action is acceptable to us, or deemed to be too risky ...
Kenya reconsidering GMO crop ban to support food security
Kenya is reconsidering its 2012 import ban on genetically modified maize as more than 1 million of its citizens require urgent humanitarian ...
‘Exotic’ genes from obsolete cotton varieties could boost crop yields without sacrificing fiber quality
Cotton breeders face a "Catch-22." Yield from cotton crops is inversely related to fiber quality. In general, as yield improves, ...
Podcast: ‘Are we all going to die?’ Entomologist breaks down the ‘bee-pocalypse’ that ‘threatens the global food supply’
Bees are important crop pollinators and reduced bee numbers have been described by farmers overseas as a bee crisis. Global ...
USDA endorses G-20 commitment to science-based policy, sustainable farming technology
USDA officials signed on to a G-20 statement backing the development of climate-smart technology and promoting science-based decision-making. Top USDA ...
IBM, Yara International announce digital platform to optimize crop production for individual farms
Yara International, a leader in crop nutrition, and IBM announced [April 26] an agreement to build the world’s leading digital ...
Omega-3 oil from GMO plants equivalent to fish oil, human clinical study shows
Research .... has shown that key omega-3 fatty acids within GM plant oils are taken up and processed by the ...
Neonicotinoid insecticides threaten birds? Friends of the Earth botches the science, entomologist says
Usually the Friends of the Earth emails are about some environmental cause that makes me chuckle. They’re always on the ...
Viewpoint: Why grow GMO crops? Because they cut pesticide use 37%
The development and utilization of GMOs is not well understood by most consumers, causing them to be susceptible to misleading ...
Genetically modified Arctic Fuji apple headed for grocery stores following FDA approval
Okanagan Specialty Fruits Inc., developer of genetically modified non-browning apples, on April 26 received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval ...
EPA reaffirms glyphosate weed killer safe, calls IARC cancer designation an ‘outlier’ inconsistent with multiple assessments
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on [April 30] reaffirmed its finding that glyphosate, the world's most popular herbicide, is not ...
Canadian farmers anticipate access to new GMO crops as US-China trade deal nears completion
Canadian farmers may benefit from the trade dispute between the United States and China to the tune of hundreds of ...
From prosthetic limbs to lab-grown meat, technology can drastically improve animal welfare
While it's easy to think about all the ways technology has benefited humans, major technological advances have improved the lives ...
Soil erosion accelerates climate change, impacting 3.2 billion people, UN report claims
There's three times more carbon in the soil than in the atmosphere – but that carbon's being released by deforestation ...
