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.
Is the world facing ecological collapse? Not if we ‘engineer our environment’ more productively
In a recent Nature Sustainability paper, a team of scientists concluded that the Earth can sustain, at most, only 7 billion ...
Monsanto, cancer patient’s lawyers face off on first day of Roundup-glyphosate weed killer trial
Opening statements began in federal court in San Francisco on [July 9] in the trial for the first of thousands ...
Gene-drive off-switch addresses concerns of releasing ‘genocidal’ mosquitoes into nature to control pests and disease
Researchers in the UK have developed the first ‘switchable’ gene drive system, potentially addressing fears that the use of gene ...
GMO, non-GMO or organic? Comprehensive look at ecological costs and benefits of crop production
Labels on food are everywhere — organic, free range, no antibiotics, non-GMO, made with Genetic Engineering, etc. What do these ...
Mandatory genetically engineered food labels could reduce consumer fears, opposition to biotechnology, food scientists claim
Science Advances (the open-access version of Science Magazine) just published a paper I co-authored with Jane Kolodinsky from the University of Vermont. ... Several years ago, I ...
Ghanian former anti-GMO farm leader reverses stance, now backs biotechnology innovation
Former National President of the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana Mohammed Adams Nasiru has dismissed concerns Genetically Modified Foods (GMO) ...
Gene edited tomatoes could produce natural colorings to replace dyes used to colorize farmed fish
In the wild, fish such as salmon or trout eat crustaceans or insects with natural pigments that lend their flesh ...
Viewpoint: Environmentalist Mark Lynas debunks dire anti-GMO predictions
Remember all the warnings about genetically modified organisms? They’re bad for us; they harm the environment; there is too little ...
GMO label should be mandatory on refined oils and sugars, says food industry lobby, aligning with anti-biotech groups
Consumers will lose trust in the food industry if USDA does not mandate that refined ingredients such as oils and ...
Viewpoint: With yield boost over organics of 33 percent, genetic engineering offers developing world chance at food security
Hunger and population outgrowing food supply have been an age-long issue. The English scholar and cleric, Thomas Malthus raised the ...
Viewpoint: Popular science news website promotes pesticide conspiracy theory
Two weeks ago, we reported on a bizarre decision by the online news arm of the journal Science: The outlet had reprinted ...
Viewpoint: Organic milk offers no nutritional or safety advantages over conventional counterpart and is more expensive
While fewer people are drinking milk overall these days, organic milk is holding steady in Canada’s $5-billion organic industry, with ...
Viewpoint: EU’s new pesticide oversight committee is poised to further politicize glyphosate controversy
Earlier this year, the European Parliament created PEST, a temporary committee on pesticides, to try and draw a line under the controversy ...
Viewpoint: Dicamba pesticide mess already haunting Bayer’s takeover of Monsanto
It’s happening again. In states from Mississippi to Indiana, some US soybean farmers are seeing a troubling sight: Previously healthy plants ...
EU decision nears: How will gene-edited crops be regulated?
We asked [Professor Jim Dunwell] about the protracted decision on regulation and what this will mean for the future of gene ...
Viewpoint: CRISPR and other new plant breeding technologies (NBTs) can help Europe address food and farming problems
Language and accusations are still exactly what they were in the late 1990s: “Frankenfoods” allegedly threatened the health and lives ...
Viewpoint: GMO wheat fiasco highlights weaknesses in Canada’s food regulation system
Canadian grain officials are confident that a visiting delegation from Japan will be satisfied that Canada’s wheat system does not ...
‘Power of genetics’: Seed industry sees plant breeding innovation as key to sustainable agriculture
“Innovations in plant breeding are enabling us to develop plants that meet the needs of a changing world,” said President ...
Video: How CRISPR is changing the GMO debate
CRISPR is changing everything we thought we knew about Genetic Engineering, because according to the USDA, they won't be regulating ...
Viewpoint: Simple disclosure—not fancy logo—is what GMO labeling needs
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has come up with cheerful new labels for genetically modified foods. The bright green and ...
How did GMO wheat end up in a ditch in Canada? We may never know
It appears the public will never know how Monsanto’s Roundup Ready trait ended up in wheat plants discovered in Alberta ...
Indian state Maharashtra waiting on federal government to ban sale of glyphosate herbicide
After questions were raised in a meeting chaired by union agriculture secretary over the rationale in issuing licences for sale ...
Viewpoint: Biofortified GMO crops can help alleviate world hunger
About 800 million people are currently suffering from hunger in the world, and some 2 billion suffer from some type of ...
Uganda’s biosafety bill would force farmers to chose between organic and GMO corn
From a distance, Edward Nsubuga’s 12-acre maize field appears to be well-kept. But the crop’s tall, green stalks mask an ...
Golden Rice misinformation: FDA debunks Michael Pollan, Independent Science News
On May 24, 2018 the FDA approved Golden Rice for consumption in the USA, a curious move, because we will ...
Counterfeit GMO Bt corn seeds could jeopardize Philippines’ crop
The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) has warned that the proliferation of counterfeit Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) corn seeds in ...
China poised to approve more GMO crops as influential board meets
An influential Chinese scientific advisory board on genetically modified crops met last week for the first time in a year, ...
