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.
Lifting Sri Lanka’s glyphosate herbicide ban welcomed by tea industry
Editor's note: The following is part of an editorial by The Island, a daily English-language newspaper in Sri Lanka The reported ...
Genetic mutation can triple sorghum grain yields—and could boost rice, corn and wheat too
A simple genetic modification can triple the grain number of sorghum, a drought-tolerant plant that is an important source of ...
Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski continues crusade against genetically engineered salmon in US
Controversial genetically engineered (GE) salmon pioneer AquaBounty Technologies could be cleared to begin US salmon sales if a continued prohibition ...
Viewpoint: US funding for IARC cancer agency should be frozen until changes are made
Question: When is a carcinogen not necessarily a carcinogen? Answer: When the labelling is done by the World Health Organization’s ...
Ugandan farmer: Politicians should listen to country’s farmers, give us access to GMO crops
Genetically Modified Organisms, also known as GMOs, remain one of the most hotly debated topics in agriculture both locally and ...
European farm groups defend neonicotinoids as environmental NGOs calls for total ban to protect bees
[Editor's note: On Feb. 28, the European Food Safety Authority issued a report concluding that neonicotinoid insecticides pose risks to ...
‘Living paints’: GMO bacteria could be used to make biodegradable paints
Now here's a bright idea. Researchers in Europe have developed a technique for growing genetically modified bacteria that can be used as ...
On India’s black market, herbicide-tolerant GMO cotton seeds sell for 1.7 times what Monsanto charged
[W]hile the government wanted to keep prices low for Indian farmers, as [the South Asia Biotechnology Centre] points out, the ...
Anti-GMO group plans to sue New Zealand food safety regulator over Golden Rice approval
Campaign group GE-Free New Zealand is considering taking legal action against regulator Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) and the ...
Viewpoint: Humans have been ‘genetically modifying’ food for thousands of years
Genes are bits of DNA which determine all sorts of traits and characteristics in any organism, from size to what ...
GMO switchgrass—potential biofuel crop—does not hurt soil health, study finds
Overcoming the natural resistance of plant cell walls to deconstruction, known as recalcitrance, is a major bottleneck to cost-effective biofuel ...
Lost resistance: GMO cassava project demonstrates difficulties of crop improvement
In Sub-saharan Africa, cassava serves as a major staple for most people; in fact it is the third largest carbohydrate ...
‘The taste of pesticides in wines’: Dissecting Gilles-Eric Seralini’s latest ethically and scientifically questionable study
The notorious Gilles-Eric Seralini published a paper recently called “The Taste of Pesticides in Wines.” As a part of the ...
Bill Gates: GMO foods ‘perfectly healthy’, could reduce starvation and malnutrition
Bill Gates has a message for anti-GMO advocates: I'm disappointed. In a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" on Tuesday, Gates said that ...
Viewpoint: Why environmentalists should support GMO crops
[G]enetic modification increases corn yields, by a lot. This is not surprising: pests account for a loss of almost one-third ...
What will the GMO debate look like 20 years in the future?
When Monsanto created RoundUp, it plunked itself in the centre of a public throng that had never seen its likes ...
Bayer-Monsanto merger stalls Burkina Faso’s GMO cotton plans
Talks with Bayer to reintroduce genetically modified (GM) cotton in Burkina Faso are on hold pending the German drug and ...
Video: NASA-inspired ‘speed breeding’ tricks crops into growing faster
Australian scientists, inspired by NASA space experiments, have pioneered a new method of growing crops - known as 'speed breeding' ...
Neonicotinoid insecticides pose risks to wild bees and honeybees, European Food Safety Authority says
The world’s most widely used insecticides pose a serious danger to both honeybees and wild bees, according to a major ...
Federal judge halts California’s plan to require cancer warning label on glyphosate products
A federal judge on Monday halted California’s plan to require Monsanto to place warning labels on its Roundup products, saying scientists haven’t ...
Is public fear of GMO food increasing?
The National Science Foundation surveys a representative sample of Americans every two years. The General Social Survey asks about general attitudes about ...
Video: How GMO cotton helps farmers save fuel and water—and reduces pesticide use
When I think of cotton, I think of the southern United States. Australia may not come to mind, but they ...
Viewpoint: How ‘Big Food’ co-opted the organic movement
I was recently dispatched to a Target to buy some Goldfish, which was a more daunting task than you might ...
Nuseed’s GMO canola set to become world’s first plant-based source of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids
Australian and New Zealand regulators have given the green light to Nuseed’s omega-3 canola variety for and use in animal, ...
Canadian beekeepers sue Bayer and Syngenta, blame neonicotinoid manufacturers for bee deaths
A Quebec class-action lawsuit against two producers of neonicotinoids — commonly used insecticides that have been linked to a declining population of honeybees — ...
Russia funds articles questioning GMO safety in bid to hurt US ag industry, research shows
Politics isn't the only issue where Russia seeks to sway U.S. opinion. The former communist country is trying to influence ...
Organic beer? Anheuser-Busch to sell organic Michelob Ultra in Whole Foods, other stores
After years of targeting health-conscious beer drinkers with Michelob Ultra, Anheuser-Busch InBev is going after an even choosier consumer: the organic shopper. The ...
