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.
Federal judge rules California can’t label glyphosate herbicide as cancer-causing
California cannot require companies to place warning labels on glyphosate products, a federal judge affirmed in a ruling issued Tuesday [June 12] ...
Viewpoint: Post-Brexit UK can help farmers by giving them access to GMO crops
With timeframes beginning to take shape for the Agriculture Bill and Environment Act, Michael Gove is presented with a number ...
Viewpoint: Why was pro-GMO professor David Zaruk fired?
David Zaruk is an expert in European Union regulations and risk communication. He writes a blog, titled The Risk-Monger, which largely ...
Neonicotinoid insecticides negatively impact bumblebee queen health, lab study finds
In a study published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers at the University of California, Riverside found that ...
Lawsuit against Dannon alleging misleading non-GMO label dismissed by New York court
The Southern District of New York joins the list of federal courts that have recently rejected potential class action suits ...
Why is the first US genetically engineered salmon farm in Indiana?
The first genetically-modified animal for human consumption could be arriving in grocery stores across the United States as early as ...
GMO crops provide billions in economic benefits each year—with majority going to farmers in developing countries, industry analysis says
This paper estimates the value of using genetically modified (GM) crop technology in agriculture at the farm level. It follows ...
Naturally decaffeinated CRISPR coffee and disease-resistant bananas? Tropic Biosciences takes big step towards commercializing both
In a lab at a U.K. research park, researchers from a startup called Tropic Biosciences are using CRISPR to create a better ...
Scientists develop GMO rice with high levels of iron and zinc
A team of researchers led by Navreet Bhullar from the Institute of Molecular Plant Biology at ETH Zurich has genetically ...
Viewpoint: What Charles Mann’s ‘Wizard and Prophet’ book gets wrong about food and agriculture
I've been reading Charles Mann's latest book Wizards and Prophets, which was released earlier this year. ... While I thought the ...
Debunking the myth that India is awash in pesticides
India has made rapid progress in the field of agriculture in recent years. Unfortunately, this largely remains unknown and uncelebrated ...
Why isn’t India’s government arresting farmers using unapproved herbicide-tolerant GMO cotton seeds?
Many Indian farmers are openly sowing an unapproved variety of genetically modified (GM) cotton seeds developed by Monsanto, as the ...
Impossible Foods hits back at Grub Street article questioning Impossible Burger’s safety
Impossible Foods is a disruptive company with an urgent mission to make meat better. Mainstream and social media play a critical ...
Kenya to commercialize insect-resistant GMO Bt cotton later this year
The country’s textile industry is headed for a big boost after Genetically Modified cotton planting began locally. A journey of ...
Science disproves Seralini GMO rat tumor study—but his findings were always an outlier
Gilles-Éric Séralini is a French researcher who came to fame from publishing a study in 2012 claiming that herbicide-tolerant GMO corn, with ...
Putin’s organic empire: How billionaires are remaking Russian agriculture
Deep in the Caucasus, downriver from Europe’s highest peak, North Korean women roam Soviet-era hothouses growing what tycoon Vladimir Evtushenkov is betting ...
SexyPlant: Can GMO crops that produce insect sex pheromones replace pesticides?
“Sexy plants” are on the way to replacing many harmful pesticides, scientists say, by producing the sex pheromones of insects ...
Brazilian government fines native communities for growing GMO crops
The savannah scrubland where Chief João Ponce once hunted deer and wild boar in Brazil has given way to neat ...
Gene editing could provide humane alternative to painful cattle dehorning
Physical dehorning of dairy cattle is a standard practice to protect both human dairy workers and other animals from injury ...
The social consequences of the GMO debate
The GMO debate has been raging for two decades, but this debate isn’t actually about GMOs at all. Rather, “GMOs” ...
GMO crops in Africa: How South African farmers paved the way
“I feel I wasted my time working for over 20 years as an electrical engineer in Johannesburg,” said Khambi Frans ...
Viewpoint: Divide between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ chemicals is meaningless
Since pesticides and herbicides are routinely in the news, lately because of the "Glyphosate Wars," (2) I thought it might be interesting to ...
Why is the Impossible Burger under attack by anti-GMO groups?
The food start-up’s success is undeniable — and a noticeable affront to Big Meat — but Impossible Foods’ hasty rise has also ...
EU food safety chief: Reelection—not reality—motivated Europe’s anti-glyphosate politicians
Some politicians spoke “loudly” against glyphosate, the world’s most commonly used weedkiller, before their elections but came back to reality ...
Natural insecticide from tobacco plants could fend off crop pests without killing them
Although it's associated with nasty cigarettes, the tobacco plant is also a potential source of vaccines, biofuel and antibiotics. Now, a chemical from the ...
R.I.P. Monsanto. Our hates will go on.
Welp, this is the end of Monsanto. Not the end of the seed company, mind you, but the end of ...
Canada to decide on neonicotinoid restrictions this summer
The fate of two neonicotinoid seed treatments, applied to almost all of the canola and corn seeds in Canada and ...
