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.
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 ...
New database tracks development of CRISPR-edited plants to spur biotech crop innovation
Recently developed gene editing tools, such as CRISPR / Cas, allow plant scientists to discover the functions of innumerable plant ...
Viewpoint: Despite anti-GMO opposition, poor farmers will finally plant ‘life-saving’ golden rice
Golden Rice which has been genetically engineered to have higher levels of the vitamin A precursor beta-carotene is finally about ...
Are houseplants indoor air filters? Science busts a popular home gardening myth
Houseplants have much to recommend them. They’re fun to care for, they look good on Instagram, and they express environmental ...
Video: How we fool ourselves into fearing our food—and how to stop
Pesticides, chemicals, cancer - the world is a scary place and our dinner plate even more so. Or so it ...
Ban on aerial glyphosate spraying of coca crops could ‘derail’ peace efforts, Colombia’s president warns
A judicial ban on aerial spraying of the herbicide glyphosate to eliminate coca crops should be modified, Colombia’s President Ivan ...
Buy local; save the bees; avoid GMOs: Americans’ top food-related causes
For companies to successfully fulfill [consumer demand for transparency], they need to be in tune to what causes and concerns ...
Viewpoint: Clif Bar is ‘concern trolling’ competition with its organic food propaganda
Clif Bar published an open letter [March 6] to their “largest competitor” in the New York Times. The letter asks ...
FDA lifts 2016 import ban on GMO AquAdvantage salmon, confirms fish safe to eat
The Food & Drug Administration announced [March 8] that it will be deactivating a 2016 import alert that prevented genetically ...
Court-mandated release of unpublished glyphosate studies could ‘reinvigorate’ EU’s Monsanto Roundup controversy
An EU court ruled [March 7] that European lawmakers must be given access to scientific studies examining the safety of ...
Researchers petition UK officials to launch disease-resistant potato field trials
The Sainsbury Laboratory, Norwich [in the UK], has applied to [the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] Defra for ...
