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.
Indian rice farmers increasingly opt for buying high-yielding hybrids instead of saving seeds
The poorer a state, the less are the chances of its farmers adopting high-yielding seed technology, right? Well, not when ...
GMO pigs could reduce nitrogen and phosphorus pollution up to 45%
In pig production, inefficient feed digestion causes excessive nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen to be released to the environment ...
Anti-GMO groups’ attacks lead University of Florida professor Kevin Folta to resign as chair of horticulture department
Christopher Barbey, a UF doctoral student, researches strawberry genetics at UF with his research partner in a lab with no ...
Why do most farmers buy seeds instead of saving and replanting them?
Saving seed from this year’s crop in order to sow it the following spring is a romantic idea, but most ...
Viewpoint: Non-GMO salt exploits Americans’ scientific illiteracy
There it was on the salt container label, the proud proclamation that the product inside was "non-GMO." I looked at ...
Kenyan cotton farmers call on government to lift GMO ban to revive struggling industry
[Kenyan farmers] were brought to their knees by low cotton yields when farmers lost interest in the crop.... However, if ...
The end of livestock dehorning? Gene-edited hornless dairy cattle move towards commercialization
Dehorning could soon be a thing of the past thanks to alliance formed by two genetics companies based in the ...
Federal GMO labeling could cost $3 billion—more than government spends annually on food safety
Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue ... is rolling out the new rules for labeling genetically engineered foods. The National Bioengineered ...
China’s delays in GMO crop approvals cost US economy $7 billion, biotech industry group says
Delays in Chinese approvals of imported genetically modified crops have cut U.S. gross domestic product by about $7 billion over ...
Reviving the American chestnut: Genetic modification can save the iconic tree from extinction
We’re using the tools of biotechnology to produce fully American chestnut trees that successfully tolerate blight infections, protecting the tree ...
How CRISPR is speeding up animal research
Fifteen years ago or so, when Helen Sang, a geneticist at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, and her colleagues wanted to ...
Are plants conscious? Here’s what the experts think
Michael Marder Ikerbasque Research Professor, Philosophy, University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz and author of Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life, ...
Can Elisabete Weiderpass reform controversial IARC cancer agency?
On Thursday 17th March, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (the IARC), appointed Dr. Elisabete Weiderpass as its new ...
Can the Impossible Burger reverse the anti-GMO trend?
With today’s environment of anti-GMO fearmongering, marketing, and mandatory labeling, who would have guessed that there would be so many think pieces on Impossible’s White Castle launch with hardly any mention of the ...
French parliament votes against banning glyphosate herbicide by 2021
France will continue to work towards removing the herbicide glyphosate from use by 2021, President Macron has confirmed, despite MPs ...
Viewpoint: EU should embrace gene-edited crops to improve food nutrition
[T]he U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue, issued a statement on March 28th providing clarification on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) ...
Debunking the claim that GMOs cause cancer
Scientists have debunked claims that Genetically Modified Organism (GMOs) cause cancer after assertions by a doctor that the products are deadly ...
Bayer’s takeover of Monsanto approved by US Justice Department after $9 billion spin-off agreement
Federal antitrust regulators have granted agribusiness giants Bayer and Monsanto permission to merge after the two companies agreed to spin ...
USDA funds research on public engagement with gene editing in agriculture
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) awarded approximately $2 million to pursue research on stakeholder and public engagement on new ...
US FDA approves GMO Golden Rice as safe to eat
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Golden Rice, marking the third positive international assessment for the genetically engineered ...
Viewpoint: Let’s make sure smallholder farmers benefit from new breeding techniques
Critics argue that agro-biotechnology, and in particular genetic engineering, only provides large multinational corporations with the means to continue their ...
What can farmers do to make sure gene-edited crops don’t suffer same fate as GMOs?
Farmers need to get in front of the messaging about genome editing technology — or risk seeing it suffer the ...
Viewpoint: Protecting wild bees is about more than just food pollination
Like my younger self, most Canadians are unaware of the vast diversity of bee species we have in Canada and ...
Former President of Nigeria Olusegun Obasanjo: Biotech crops needed to increase agricultural productivity
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo ... declared that unless innovative advances such as biotechnology are achieved in agriculture, global efforts at ...
Canadians divided on GMO safety but most support labeling, survey finds
If there’s one clear finding that emerges from a new study on genetically modified food in Canada, it’s that Canadians ...
US wants China to import more GMO crops as part of trade deal
The United States is seeking better access for imports of genetically modified crops into China as part of a trade ...
Betty Crocker: ‘GMOs are safe—we wouldn’t use them if we thought otherwise’
There's a lot of money to be made in kowtowing to the latest dietary fads and unsubstantiated health scares. ...
