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.
Threatened by warming temperatures, wineries may be forced to turn to gene editing
Warmer temperatures are advancing grape ripening and harvest dates by 2-3 weeks compared to 40 years ago. Higher temperatures are ...
Farmers incorporating AI to generate risk assessments could help soften resistance to genetically modified crops
The acceptance of genetically modified (GM) crops is still a controversial topic that presents major obstacles to their general use ...
Western diets need to change to meet sustainability challenges. How resistant will consumers be to munch on insects or plant-based meats
What will the diets of the future look like? The answer depends in part on what foods Westerners can be ...
‘Genetically modified Golden Rice poses no dangers while offering life-saving potential’—Its opponents have manufactured a deceitful counter narrative
Vitamin A deficiency (VAD), practically unknown in the western world, has been a deadly public health problem in parts of ...
Plastic waste as food? Microorganisms may one day be able to feed a growing world population
In 2019, an agency within the U.S. Department of Defense released a call for research projects to help the military deal with the ...
Pesticides cause prostate cancer? Cedars Sinai Medical Center epidemiologist criticizes ‘biased’ ecological study
A recent study published in Cancer, an international interdisciplinary journal of the American Cancer Society, concluded that there is an association ...
Podcast viewpoint: RFK, Jr spewed misinformation about glyphosate, vaccines and cellphones on Joe Rogan—clues on how he could impact US policy” ← Go to editor
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is recognized for his bad science around critical issues like vaccination and agricultural chemistry. Recently he ...
Chinese consumers open to gene-edited foods
Experts from the School of Communication, Soochow University in China, surveyed over 600 consumers in China to solicit their perceptions ...
Switzerland edges towards embracing gene edited foods
[After a 20-year moratorium on genetically modified crops], the Swiss parliament asked the government to prepare a draft act for ...
Viewpoint: What policies do the leading food, farming and activist organizations hope and fear from a second Trump Administration
Given the lack of detail in the official Republican party platform on food and ag, meanwhile, uncertainty abounds…. American Farm ...
Silicon Valley nihilism? Will reckless scientists introducing dubious technological innovations stir opposition to cellular agriculture?
[C]ultivated meat is grown from livestock cells, without slaughter. It provides a potential solution to a number of seemingly intractable ...
‘There is a coming revolution in CRISPR’: Gene editing pioneer Jennifer Doudna anticipates focus on crops and climate change
Jennifer Doudna, one of the inventors of the breakthrough gene-editing tool CRISPR, says the technology will help the world grapple ...
Biotechnology is the way forward for many of Africa’s most pressing challenges
Biotechnology is one of the modern-day scientific innovations that are widely misunderstood, especially in Africa. Often regarded as a complex ...
UK moves ahead with crop gene editing but lags in approving precision breeding to contain animal diseases
Ministers are preparing to introduce legislation [permitting] the growing of gene-edited crops in England and Wales. [However,] the new legislation ...
Gene drives minimize biodiversity loss while optimizing productivity
Chinese scientists have reportedly engineered a way to use gene-editing technology to bypass natural plant behavior and force crops to inherit genes ...
Rwandan farmers and scientists turn to genetic modification to rescue disease-threatened potatoes, maize and cassava
Rwanda could soon start using genetically modified maize, Irish potatoes, and cassava crops as confined trials are underway. Maize is ...
Intelligent food labels: Technological innovations to prevent food waste
With everyone talking about the problem of food waste worldwide, its effects are reaching way beyond just the food industry ...
What’s a burger, sausage or a steak? European Union court rules can legally be used in marketing vegan products
The news that France or any member state can’t ban meaty terms in plant-based food labels has given [the] industry a ...
Pakistan drops ban on importing GMO soybeans
The federal government [of Pakistan] has officially authorised the import of genetically modified (GMO) soybean by granting licences to dozens ...
Viewpoint: Is the anti-corporate MAHA—pro-big business Trump alliance viable?
[Robert] Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) wants “to dismantle the corporate stranglehold on our government agencies that has led ...
Food-crippled Malawi rejects GMO crops, claiming they cause health problems
Agriculture Minister Sam Kawale has ruled out genetically modified organism (GMO) food supplements as a solution to Malawi’s perennial food ...
Artificial nose in development may make it possible to easily detect spoiled and damaged food
New artificial nose technology developed by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) could make it possible to reliably ...
‘Banning pesticides would upend the US food system’: Farmers alarmed that the Trump-RFK, Jr. alliance could cripple US agriculture
Donald Trump’s embrace of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his fringe health theories is triggering a flurry of outreach in ...
Lab-grown fish face unique obstacles to create and scale
One of the main challenges that lab-grown fish startups have encountered is keeping cells from sticking to the sides of ...
Mexico’s ban on GM corn ‘could disproportionately affect the nation’s lower-income consumers’
A fully implemented ban on genetically modified corn in Mexico could disproportionately affect the nation's lower-income consumers, according to a ...
‘Milestone moment’: Drought-tolerant wheat trait deregulated by the Food and Drug Administration, but it will be years until its commercially available
For 20 years, genetically modified wheat traits were set on the back burner, but now GMO wheat is back on ...
Viewpoint: As the UK edges closer to limiting regulations on gene-edited crops, concerns mount that precision breeding of farm animals will be left behind
It is encouraging that Defra food security minister Daniel Zeichner has since confirmed that the Government will introduce the necessary ...
