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.
Sen. Pat Roberts: ‘Uncertainty and dysfunction have overtaken’ USDA organic program
The far-reaching difficulty that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has in determining whether imported “organic” food meets standards or is ...
Milk without cows, eggs without chickens? Synthetic biology could lead to more sustainable food
[Editor's note: The following is a Q&A with Swedish bio-hacker Hannes Sjoblad.] Bio-hacking applies technology in innovative ways to modify biological systems ...
Garbage? Study challenges claim that Americans waste $165 billion of food each year
Say you’re a journalist, and you’ve been assigned a story about food waste. You’re on a deadline, and you need ...
Uganda’s ag minister: Opposition to GMOs means ‘telling people to remain poor’
The Uganda government says it is determined to ensure that the Biotech Bill is passed into law to facilitate safe development ...
Scientists skeptical EU neonicotinoid ban would help bees
As the EU prepares to rule on extending a ban on neonicotinoid pesticides, a large-scale study opened the door for industry to argue ...
Opinion: USDA ‘should rely upon science and facts’ to update GMO regulations
[Paul Enríquez is a lawyer and scientist currently doing research in structural and molecular biochemistry at North Carolina State University.] ...
CRISPR food is coming: How gene editing will change agriculture
In the near future, scientists will engineer food that grows faster and does not spoil. This is the promise of ...
Opinion: Think twice before purchasing products with the ‘fake news’-spreading Non-GMO Project label
[Editor's note: Randy Krotz is CEO of the US Farmers & Ranchers Alliance.] I am increasingly finding items that are labeled ...
Irish professor: Don’t listen to ‘lunatic fringe’ myths that foods cause—or cure—cancer
Most cancers are caused by bad luck and genetic factors, with little evidence to link specific foods to the disease, ...
Biotech industry urges USDA to overhaul ‘outdated’ crop biotechnology regulations
[The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS)] is proposing a regulatory program in which ...
Lesson from debate over Food Evolution movie? ‘Doesn’t make sense to judge GMOs as a monolithic entity’
[Marion] Nestle told The Outline that her comments in the film were taken “out of context” because its narrow focus on the ...
USDA plans to publish draft of proposed federal GMO labeling rule this fall
USDA will publish a draft of its proposed federal GMO labeling rule in the fall of this year (which will ...
Anti-GMO groups pressure USDA to not approve eucalyptus trees engineered to withstand freezing temperatures
Groups are urging the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) not to green light the commercial growth of a genetically engineered ...
Protectionism? Italian farmers ‘demonize’ Canadian products made from wheat grown using glyphosate
They came from up and down Italy, setting up their protest headquarters just a few dozen cobblestone steps from the ...
Holy Communion: Vatican approves GMO bread but rejects ‘gluten-free’
The unleavened bread used to celebrate the holy communion during Catholic masses can be made with genetically modified organisms, the Vatican said ...
USDA approves first release of GE diamondback moths, in New York cabbage fields
A proposal to release genetically engineered diamondback moths in cabbage fields in upstate New York has received a green light ...
Fully sequenced rice genome could accelerate biofuel research
Rice is a staple food for over half of the world's population and a model for studies of candidate bioenergy ...
‘Ready and waiting’: Why hasn’t even one vitamin-enriched GMO crop been approved?
[Editor's note: Sterling Ericsson is a biology focused science communicator with a degree in molecular biology.] Traditional artificial breeding methods have been ...
Syngenta settles with Nebraska farmer for ‘rushing’ GMO corn to market before Chinese approval
Syngenta AG reached a confidential settlement with a Nebraska farmer who claimed the company mishandled marketing of its genetically modified seed, ...
Missouri temporarily halts sale, use of dicamba due to drift complaints
The Missouri Department of Agriculture halted the sale or use of any products containing the Monsanto-made herbicide Dicamba.... In a ...
Hawaiian GMO farmer on Food Evolution doc: Saving papaya from extinction is not ‘propaganada’
[Editor's note: Joni Kamiya is a family farmer growing GMO papaya on Hawaii's North Shore.] The [GMO] papaya works, it ...
Lead author of controversial bee study: ‘Don’t give up on neonics’ although they may have ‘subtle’, mitigable effects
[Editor's note: Ben Woodcock is an ecological entomologist at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology in the UK. He is the ...
Glyphosate herbicide may alter ecosystem by increasing tadpole population
[A] common herbicide has turned out to be a boon for tadpoles making them more toxic to predators, researchers said.... Common ...
Swedish court: Coop grocery chain ‘misled’ consumers by claiming organic food safer, healthier
The makers of the viral 2015 “Organic Effect” video, which claimed that switching to an all organic diet can eliminate ...
Vitamin-A rich GMO banana, which could fight malnutrition in Africa, ready for field trials
Scientists in Australia have created golden-orange-fleshed bananas rich in pro-vitamin A that could save the lives of hundreds of thousands ...
‘Science moms’ defend Food Evolution movie against Zen Honeycutt’s ‘propaganda’ accusation
[Written by Alison Bernstein, Layla Katiraee, Jenny Splitter, Kavin Senapathy, and Anastasia Bodnar.] Despite numerous statements that the producers had creative ...
Opinion: ‘Fear-based’ food labels—like Dannon’s GMO-free claims—undermine confidence in safe food system
[Editor's note: Kent Messer is a professor at the University of Delaware.] As a behavioral economist, I analyze what motivates ...
