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.
Cuba could begin planting GMO soy, corn by Spring 2017
[Editor's note: This excerpt has been translated into English by Google Translate and lightly edited for clarity] "Following the successful ...
London brewery uses genetic analysis to custom make your favorite beer
...[O]ne London brewery has developed a customized beer service that caters to customers' personal genetic information. Meantime Brewery partnered with ...
Is developed nations’ anti-GMO activism ‘arrogance of affluence’?
While working on a research project in South Africa I met a distinguished-looking farmer, well dressed in a suit and ...
Genetically engineered yeast could make whiskey less expensive
Biotech company BioTork has engineered strains of yeast that demonstrate increased ethanol yields and decreased time needed for fermentation, according to a ...
Biologist, environmental lawyer, food columnist: GMOs shouldn’t be controversial
Two UCLA faculty members — molecular biologist Robert Goldberg and international law and policy scholar Edward Parson — defended the ...
Fertilizers helped food keep pace with population growth but with Faustian bargain?
Most people don’t think about fertilizer, but few innovations are as central to modern life. In the 20th century, manmade ...
Chipotle’s non-GMO policy is an empty gesture
Chipotle has successfully rebelled against the establishment (aka greasy fast-food restaurants) and changed the way Americans approach fast food. ... But the means ...
Canadian Agriculture Committee rejects mandatory GMO labels
The House of Commons Agriculture Committee has recommended Ottawa pursue mandatory warning labels on food for health and safety reasons only ...
Kenyan students promise demonstrations if GMO ban not lifted
Students from five public universities have threatened to usher in the New Year with massive nationwide protests if the Jubilee ...
Chinese biotech firm testing insect resistant, herbicide tolerant GMO corn in US greenhouse
A Chinese biotech seed firm has planted genetically modified corn seeds in the United States at a greenhouse designated by ...
Bumblebees fed high doses of neonicotinoids in laboratory setting did not buzz as much or release pollen
The world’s most widely used insecticides harm the ability of bees to vibrate flowers and shake out the pollen to fertilise crops, ...
Making meat sustainable: ‘Intensive’ livestock farms more ecological than the ‘natural’ alternative
As global demand for meat grows, the environmental “hoofprint” of livestock production could grow, too. Demand-side strategies are unlikely to ...
Science and technology in food production can limit environmental footprint while increasing production
The Breakthrough Institute is in the midst of releasing a series of articles on the future of food. The latest article ...
Pink-fleshed GMO pineapple coming to your dinner table
A strain of pineapple genetically engineered to be pink instead of yellow got the go-ahead from the U.S. Food and ...
Allergic to peanuts? Genetic engineering may provide a rescue
Allergic reactions to peanuts cause around 500 hospitalizations and even some deaths in the United States each year. ... Accidentally ...
Europe risks becoming ‘museum of world agriculture’ because of aversion to genetic engineering
Europe is mired in a “shallow debate” around GM technology while the rest of the world benefits from advances in ...
Traditional African grains cannot increase yield enough to meet population growth
Maximizing cereal crops yields in sub-Saharan Africa would still fail to meet the region's skyrocketing grain demand by 2050, according ...
Timing of approval of biotech crops in different countries has big impact on innovation
Because of significant differences in the institutional arrangements, regulatory procedures, administrative capacity, and attitudes toward biotech crops, the amount of ...
How Rodale Institute, organic advocates manipulate data to ‘prove’ yields approach conventional farming
In July a new report by a panel of scientists under the banner IPES FOOD (International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food ...
Trump Administration likely to re-examine implementation of federal GMO labeling law
The Trump administration will focus on regulatory relief in its early days in office, said two farm-policy hands, who pointed ...
New sequencing technique will make cloning genes for disease resistance in plants easier
[The] constant evolutionary arms race between plants and pathogens, whereby the organisms causing disease in plants are mutating to avoid plant ...
Monsanto shareholders approve Bayer takeover
Monsanto Co. shareholders on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a $57 billion merger with Bayer AG, a deal that would combine two ...
Biotech firm Oxitec says genetically engineering fruit-damaging medfly ready for field trials
Oxitec announced [Dec. 12] that after a series of successful contained environment studies across multiple countries with its self-limiting Mediterranean fruit ...
‘Insufficient evidence’ of homeopathy’s efficacy as antibiotic replacement in livestock
Within the scientific community and veterinary practice, the use of homeopathy in food-producing animals is highly controversial. However... homeopathic remedies are ...
EPA panel begins evaluation of carcinogenicity of glyphosate
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is holding four days of meetings, beginning December 13, aimed at examining the evidence that ...
How crop insurance discourages use of sustainable cover crops
Cover crops feed soil microorganisms so they can, in turn, deliver more nutrients to the cash crop. They also improve ...
Nitrogen-efficient GMO rice uses less fertilizer, improves yields
According to FAO projections, by 2035, a 26% increase in rice production will be necessary to feed the growing population ...
