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.
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 ...
Following two glyphosate-cancer lawsuit defeats, here’s how Bayer may shore up its legal losses
San Francisco federal judge Vince Chhabria’s decision to split up the pivotal bellwether trials over an alleged link between Monsanto’s ...
Burkina Faso cotton production plummets after phasing out insect resistant Bt GMO crop
Cotton production in Burkina Faso is continuing its downward slide three years after the nation phased out the use of ...
Costly glyphosate-cancer legal battles spark Bayer shareholder ‘revolt’
You can't blame the Americans at Monsanto any more. Europe's most politically inflammatory chemical — the ubiquitous weedkiller glyphosate — ...
‘Sticky’ pesticides could protect crops, cut harmful agricultural runoff
A problem with many pesticides is that rain washes them off plants and into the soil and groundwater. Now, researchers ...
‘Road map’ of pollen development could help breed more desirable food crops
....Sexual reproduction has evolved as nature's way of shuffling the genetic deck of cards, so to speak. That shuffling actually ...
Chinese import restrictions block Brazil’s access to latest GMO crops
Brazil Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo said on [April 25] that the country must work with China to reduce non-tariff barriers ...
Alternative protein market gets competitive as startup Beyond Meat preps for IPO
Wall Street is going vegan. At some point in the next four weeks, Beyond Meat, a pioneering plant-based meat alternative ...
Viewpoint: Ironically named ‘Saving America’s Pollinators Act’ would harm bees, hinder sustainable farming
Some old ideas for bad laws are endlessly recycled. Take the case of the Saving America’s Pollinators Act, a nearly six-year-old ...
Attempts to CRISPR gene edited cassava plants to fight off viruses resulted in mutated viruses, study finds, raising concerns
Using gene-editing technology to create virus-resistant cassava plants could have serious negative ramifications, according to new research by plant biologists ...
Viewpoint: GMO crops could reduce, even eliminate, dangerous allergens in common foods
My brother was in his mid-20s when he developed a food allergy....[H]e discovered that his unpleasant side effects occurred whenever ...
Tyson Foods ends investment in plant-based protein startup Beyond Meat
Tyson Foods, the US meat producer, has exited its investment in Beyond Meat, the alternative protein company which is due ...
Activists, scientists spar over effort to restore American chestnut tree with genetic engineering
The American chestnut tree once sustained a way of life. Pioneers used the tall, straight, and fast-growing tree for fences, ...
Infographic: 1.3 billion tons of food end up in the trash. Here’s how biotech crops can help
Each year the world wastes 1.3 billion tons of food—1/3 of global production. The US throws away approximately 40 percent ...
Video: Where did the infamous needle-in-a-tomato anti-GMO image come from?
It’s become something of a personal quest: find the original “syringe-in-the-plant” image. For the last 5 years, I’ve been communicating ...
Viewpoint: EU precautionary pesticide bans threaten sustainable agriculture
Don’t blame it on sunshine or moonlight … Don’t blame it on good times (remember them?) … Don’t even blame ...
New data, novel research approaches help tackle declining monarch butterfly mystery
Monarch butterflies are an icon of nature: spectacular in form, known for their unfathomable annual migration, and frequent visitors in ...
Bayer asks appellate court to toss $78 million glyphosate-cancer verdict
Bayer AG on [April 24] asked a California appellate court to throw out a $78 million judgment it was ordered ...
Center for Science in the Public Interest calls for national registry for CRISPR-edited crops to address consumer biotech concerns
I am often asked which genetically engineered (GM) crops have entered the U.S. food supply. The question can be answered ...
This nutritionist doesn’t buy organic—and says you shouldn’t bother either
When I tell people that I’m a dietitian, the first questions I get are always, “Do you eat super healthy?” ...
Viewpoint: 5 popular Netflix documentaries serve up pseudoscience about agriculture, chemicals and nutrition
Netflix brought in $15.8 billion in revenue in 2018 in part because the streaming service floods subscribers with a deluge ...
Glyphosate exposure causes ‘transgenerational inheritance of disease’ in rats, study claims, but scientists question data
Washington State University researchers have found a variety of diseases and other health problems in the second- and third-generation offspring ...
CRISPR could save banana, major food source for 500 million people, from deadly disease, climate change
CRISPR/Cas9‐based genome editing is offering new hope for protecting a critical food security crop by developing climate-smart banana varieties. Research ...
How the USDA could help foster a technological ‘revolution’ in agriculture
Anyone paying passing attention to the agricultural sector understands that it is in the middle of an “agtech” revolution. Innovations ...
Plant-based GMO ‘Impossible’ Whopper a surprise hit at 59 Midwest Burger King locations
The St. Louis area, with 59 Burger King locations, has been chosen as the sole test market for the [plant-based] ...
Some wild bee populations declining, but ‘scarce data’ hamper impact and research efforts
More than a dozen wild bee species critical to pollinating everything from blueberries to apples in New England are on ...
