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.
Post-Brexit UK will continue GMO crop ban, environment secretary says
Food made from genetically modified crops will continue to be banned in the UK after Britain leaves the European Union, ...
Vote to approve glyphosate herbicide shakes up German, EU politics
European Union countries found themselves at odds on Monday [Nov. 27] over weed killer. After a long deadlock over renewing the ...
GMO Bt cotton poised to revive Philippines’ industry, reduce pesticide use
Following a multi-year slump, the Philippine cotton industry is anticipating a renaissance through the help of an innovative, science-based crop that farmers ...
Swiss bee expert: Varroa mites—not neonicotinoid insecticides—primary threat to honeybees
[Jean-Daniel] Charrière oversees bee research at the Swiss government's agriculture institute, Agroscope. ... Currently, there is a big focus among scientists, activists ...
Geneticist Alison Van Eenennaam: Genetic engineering could save farm animals from disease
Alison Van Eenennaam is one of agriculture’s leading voices of reason and persuasion in support of good science in food ...
Indian scientist: For some crops, genetic engineering ‘only option’ to improve food security
[Editor's note: Rajeev Varshney is Research Program Director for Genetic Gains, at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics ...
French President Macron advocates glyphosate herbicide ban within 3 years
The European Union voted on Monday [Nov. 27] to extend its authorization for the world’s best-selling herbicide for an abbreviated ...
Non-glyphosate certified: New label promises lower levels of herbicide residue
Scott Prentice, executive director of BioChecked, has been in the food certification business since 2010. However, he's made the most ...
Spy plants? DARPA working on genetically engineered surveillance sensors
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the think-tank that’s under the U.S. Department of Defense, recently announced that it’s ...
Food fight: GMO labeling disagreements behind food lobby shakeup?
Nestlé, the world’s largest food company, rocked food circles in late October with the news that it was leaving the ...
EU renews glyphosate herbicide license for 5 years, ending ‘heated debate’
EU countries approved on Monday [Nov. 27] the use of weed-killer glyphosate for the next five years after a heated ...
Video: Former Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on ‘troubling trend’ of misleading food labels
There’s been a lot of talk about the mandatory GMO disclosure law passed by the US Congress in 2016. The ...
Viewpoint: Anti-GMO movement perpetuates sexism, food insecurity
An acronym that conjures specters like pesticides, cancer, obesity, the transformation of life forms into intellectual property, and corporate control ...
Dolly the sheep revisited: Early health fears about clones ‘greatly exaggerated’
[L]ast year, Kevin Sinclair, a developmental biologist at the University of Nottingham, published a paper about several clones including Dolly’s four “sisters,” who ...
Food, vaccines and medicine: How plant scientists are changing the world
[Editor's note: Erica Hawkins is a PhD student at the John Innes Centre and the University of East Anglia studying medicinal plant ...
Viewpoint: GMO crops are future of African farming—if anti-biotech activists get out of the way
[I]nfluenced by European environmentalists, most African countries forbid the growing of genetically modified crops. This is a pity, because unless ...
Anti-biotechnology fake news: ‘Natural News’ claims RNAi used to ‘eliminate black people’
Anti-GMO campaigners are promoting a new conspiracy theory conflating the pioneering genetics technology of RNAi with anti-vaxxer myths and a ...
Mexico revokes Monsanto permit to develop GMO soybean seeds in 7 states
Agriculture sanitation authority Senasica has revoked a permit held by Monsanto to commercialize genetically modified soy in seven Mexican states ...
Argentina authorizes new herbicide-resistant GMO soybean seeds
Argentina authorized on Friday [Nov. 24] the use of genetically modified soybean seeds resistant to herbicides other than glyphosate, as ...
France to vote against 5-year EU renewal of glyphosate herbicide
France will vote against a five-year extension of the license for weed-killer glyphosate that the European Commission will propose on ...
Farmers’ choice: GMOs help make Thanksgiving food abundant and affordable
Farmers utilizing choices in seed technology, such as GMOs, allow us to have an abundance of food choices at affordable ...
African Seed Trade Association announces support for GMOs
A continental seed body on Friday [Nov. 17] supported the coexistence of genetically modified (GMO) seeds and conventional ones. The ...
New disease-resistant GMO soybean variety could protect crop from ‘sudden death syndrome’
An Iowa State University agronomist is charting mechanisms – gene by gene – that could lead to soybean varieties resistant ...
Bee friendly insecticides? Scientists unlock genetic key to kill crop pests, sparing beneficial insects
Researchers at Michigan State University’s entomology department have unlocked a key to maintain the insecticide’s effectiveness in eliminating pests without ...
Golden Potatoes: Vitamin-A fortified GMO variety could help tackle childhood blindness in Africa
We've been praising the development of Golden Rice, genetically engineered to contain the vitamin A precursor beta-carotene, for years. Since vitamin ...
Promising GMO and gene-edited wheat varieties hindered by costly regulations, consumer concerns
“Everything that my lab has produced is down in the basement.” That is how Peggy G. Lemaux, Ph.D., described the ...
Neonicotinoid insecticide has ‘no adverse effects’ on honeybee colony health, meta-analysis finds
A quantitative weight of evidence (QWoE) methodology was used to assess higher-tier studies on the effects of imidacloprid (IMI) on ...
