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.
How plants have shaped the course of human history
Quinine (Scientific name: Cinchona) is a plant that has influenced the course of human history. Used for centuries by the indigenous ...
Genetic engineering is changing our food. An expert explains everything you should know
SCIENTISTS CONTINUE TO find new ways to insert genes for specific traits into plant and animal DNA. A field of promise—and ...
Gene silencing could ‘fool’ plants into surviving harsh environments
By temporarily silencing the expression of a critical gene, researchers fooled soybean plants into sensing they were under siege, encountering ...
‘Soylent,’ ‘clean meat,’ ‘Impossible Burger’: What we call food is just as important as how it tastes
When we talk about the food of the future, we conjure images from science fiction: the pureed brown stuff in ...
Hypoallergenic foods: Genetic engineering could help prevent 30,000 US ER visits annually
Hortense Dodo has genetically engineered a hypoallergenic peanut. But she isn’t targeting people with peanut allergies. Not directly, anyway. ...
Epigenetic changes in plants could help produce food crops better suited to harsh environments
The sequence of genes passed on to daughter cells or offspring isn't the only factor that determines the traits of ...
GMO ‘frankenwheat’ for breakfast? A closer look at popular but misleading food memes
Ever play a game of telephone when you were a kid? You start with a message, whisper it in someone’s ...
Gene sequencing could help researchers breed cold-resistant crops
When temperatures fall below 32 degrees, crops exposed to the elements undergo biochemical changes designed to protect cells from cold ...
Audio: Greenpeace, UK farmers and chemical industry square off over neonicotinoid pesticide ban
The debate over neonicotinoids continued ... during a BBC Radio segment as farmers, environmentalists and the chemical industry weighed in on ...
We should stop saying biotechnology can ‘change the world,’ expert argues
It is common to hear claims that biotechnology will solve many of the world’s most perplexing problems. For example, a ...
‘Transcontinental pollination’: How migrating insects enable plants to mix
Metabarcoding, a technique of mass DNA sequencing, allows for tracing migratory routes of insects, an understudied subject due to technical ...
Forget Old McDonald, farmers must communicate consumer benefits of modern agriculture
Most farmers are reluctant to talk about modern agriculture. Our own industry advertisements promote the image of a farm with ...
Claim that Monsanto ‘secretly influenced’ glyphosate research prompts Health Canada to reevaluate Roundup safety
Health Canada [is] reviewing hundreds of studies used during the approval process for glyphosate, the active ingredient in Canada’s most ...
Activists ‘storm’ Philippine Rice Research Institute to protest field trials of vitamin-fortified Golden Rice
A group of farmers [on November 7] stormed the headquarters of the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) to protest the ...
Identifying genetic basis for plant biodiversity could help boost crop yields
Diverse communities of plants and animals typically perform better than monocultures. However, the mechanisms that are responsible for this have ...
Cell-based, synthetic, cultured? Debate intensifies over what to call lab-grown meat
Lab-grown. Cell-based. Clean. In vitro. Cultured. Fake. Artificial. Synthetic. Meat 2.0. These are all terms that refer to the same kind ...
Uganda’s GMO biosafety bill ensuring ‘no dangers’ likely to pass after embrace of president’s proposed changes
Legislators on the Parliamentary Committee on Science, Technology and Innovation have changed their positions on the GMO Bill and considered ...
America’s risk paradox: Flu killed 80,000 people this year, but we’re more worried about GMOs
We had a really bad flu season this year. The CDC just announced that about 80,000 Americans were killed .... H3N2 ...
Weed killer in your Cheerios? A pesticide expert explains everything you should know about glyphosate
Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the world and is applied to most of the U.S. corn and ...
‘Politics, money and fear’ have kept GMO salmon out of American grocery stores
AquaBounty Farms of Indiana is a land-based fish farm designed to raise the revolutionary AquAdvantage salmon. Scientists created the fish ...
How western organic food companies are threatening China’s farmers
As Chinese consumers have prioritized food quality, imported organic products have soared in popularity, with some supermarkets following in the ...
Viewpoint: ‘Heritage’ of emotional decision-making fuels EU’s opposition to biotech crops
As Daniel Patrick Moynihan, American politician and diplomat famously put it, “You are entitled to your opinion. But you are ...
How one farmer and his family convinced a fearful skeptic that GMOs are safe
With fearmongering headlines and the general misunderstanding of what goes into our food (hello, image of a syringe in a ...
Edible GMO cotton could supply protein to 600 million people daily
It turns out cotton seed is a great source of protein, except it’s currently toxic for humans. Cotton naturally produces gossypol, ...
‘Precision farming’ could slow climate change and unlock $250 billion in profits for farmers
There is a long list of global problems to combat, including hunger, drought, poverty, bad health, polluted water and poor ...
Health and environmental dangers of copper-based natural pesticides spark division among French organic winemakers
The vice-president of the CIVB (Conseil interprofessionnel du vin de Bordeaux) Bernard Farges launched a bomb on October 15, announcing that ...
Video: How accurate is Non-GMO Project’s butterfly label?
Make no mistake, the Non-GMO Project isn't here to sell you safer food, they're just here to make money on ...
