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.
Environmental Working Group’s ‘Dirty Dozen’: If you eat 18,615 servings of kale daily, pesticides still won’t harm your health
[On March 20] the Environmental Working Group (EWG) [released] their so-called “dirty dozen” list. Before covering or using this “list,” ...
Glyphosate on trial: Second jury says Bayer’s Roundup weed killer carcinogenic
A US jury has found that one of the world's most widely-used weedkillers was a "substantial factor" in causing a ...
GMO crop approvals focal point of trade talks as US urges China to boost agricultural imports
China has offered the U.S. some “very attractive numbers” for purchases of farm goods as part of “dynamic” trade talks, ...
Lab-grown, plant-based meats raise thorny ethical questions about animal welfare, sustainability
Meatless Monday. “Vegetable-forward” restaurants. Plant-based diets. Foregoing meat is more mainstream than ever before, and at the center of this ...
‘Regenerative agriculture’: World-saving idea or food marketing ploy?
You’re about to start seeing the term “regenerative” when you scan packages of Cheerios and boxed mac and cheese in ...
US lawmakers spar over future of lab-grown, plant-based foods
Towering over a wooden podium in the Arkansas General Assembly....Republican representative David Hillman, a self-declared calf-roper, spoke of steak to ...
Can genetically engineered bacteria ward off a hangover?
We all know that alcohol is bad for you — like really bad for you — and a night of ...
As EU glyphosate-cancer debate rages, 4 countries may take over herbicide safety evaluation from Germany
France, Hungary, the Netherlands and Sweden have agreed to take over from Germany as the lead countries responsible for assessing ...
Malawi inches closer to commercializing GMO Bt cotton as crop yields double in field trials
Malawi is inching closer to commercializing Bt cotton as research into the genetically modified crop is at an advanced stage ...
Bayer lawsuit: Here’s how plaintiffs in next Roundup trial will try to show glyphosate causes cancer
A late March start date is scheduled for a California state court trial of plaintiffs, Alva and Alberta Pilliod, against ...
Organic companies drop ‘anti-establishment tilt,’ partner with global corporations to meet surging ‘natural’ food demand
Big Food and the organics industry are gaining an appetite for each other. With sales of conventional packaged staples lagging, ...
Booming sales suggest non-browning Arctic apple could be breakthrough product, overcoming anti-GMO fears
Jack Bobo doesn’t hold back when talking about the Arctic Apple. He believes the non-browning apple could change how people ...
Organic producers battle over food labeling standards as industry nears $50 billion in sales
As organic food shifts from utopian movement to lucrative industry, a war is being waged for its soul. Record organic ...
Viewpoint: While Kind Bar debunks ‘healthy’ organic sugar claim, it promotes equally deceptive non-GMO labels
Dear Kind Bar: [On March 6] you delighted people in the agriculture and science communities. Clif Bar tried to shame ...
Investors back alternative protein startups as lab-grown, plant-based foods ‘flood’ the market
Cell-cultured meat, plant-based foie gras, algae milk and seaweed caviar are just some of the increasingly sophisticated alternative protein options ...
African farmers want GMO seeds to help weather climate change
It’s an old proverb in these lands that since man has learned to shoot without missing, birds have learned to ...
Digital agriculture: Data-gathering robots, drones may be the future of farming
For six generations, Ben Riensche’s family has tended corn and soybeans outside Jesup, a town of 2,500 on the windswept ...
As sugar demand falls, gene editing could ‘reinvent’ sugarcane as green energy
Sugar has long been a source of energy for people, but now scientists believe they are close to unlocking its ...
Calyxt gene-edited soybean oil debuts in Midwestern US restaurants
At the end of [February 2019], Calyxt, an agriculture-focused company based in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, announced its first sale of ...
Viewpoint: Organic ingredients don’t make junk food less fattening or more nutritious
Our increasingly health-conscious society has created more and more of a demand for organic versions of our favorite junk foods ...
Argentina fears skeptical consumers could cripple global rollout of drought-tolerant GMO wheat
Argentina thinks it has a solution to droughts that’ve plagued blockbuster wheat producers from the Black Sea to Australia. The ...
Key ‘non-GMO’ ingredient for next plant-based burger may come from algae
Triton Algae Innovations - a San Diego-based firm building a production platform for food proteins from algae - says it ...
Oxford zoologists: Insect decline studies could erode confidence in science if not held to rigorous standards
Global rates of insect decline will be very hard to measure. Conclusions regarding drivers and rates of declines can be ...
Genetic analysis reveals mysterious evolution of brewer’s yeast that makes beer possible
The strain of brewers’ yeast used to make beer, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, derives from versions used over thousands of years to ...
Will ‘Green New Deal’ mean the end of hamburgers?
Amid the various critiques of the proposed Green New Deal, few capture the alarmism of the American right quite like ...
Bayer lawsuit: First federal glyphosate-cancer trial heads to jury
A trial in which a California man alleged his use of Bayer AG’s glyphosate-based Roundup weed killer caused his cancer ...
Viewpoint: Neonicotinoid ban puts UK sugar beet yields at risk for first time in 25 years
For the past 25 years, sugar beet agronomy hasn’t been complicated by the threat of virus yellows – it’s only ...
