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.
Indian officials call on researchers to produce GMO chickpea within two years
Director-General of the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) Trilochan Mohapatra has asked agricultural scientists to double their work on ...
Bangladesh’s GMO brinjal success undermines anti-GMO narrative
The anti-GMO narrative – and that is what it is, a story – has several consistent elements:. . . ...
Dietician, mom advises ‘don’t be shamed by misleading labels,’ ignore butterfly Non-GMO label
. . . As a teenager, heading back to school might inspire "label" anxiety - that of the "did I get ...
Whistleblower awarded $22 million for alerting SEC about Monsanto’s misstated earnings
A former financial executive at Monsanto Co. will collect a nearly $22.5 million reward for alerting the Securities and Exchange Commission to alleged ...
Anti-GMO protestors throw feces, eggs at European plant breeding conference
Imagine being so upset that a group of plant breeders and botanists are talking about agriculture that you storm in ...
‘Frankenfood’ characterization stifles real discussion of social issues raised by GMOs
. . . Frankenstein. . . [articulates] the public’s visceral fears of scientific and technological innovation. Indeed, the pejorative prefix Franken- has taken ...
Cornell University offering free online course on GMOs
Genetically Modified Organisms have been a topic of much controversy. . . Cornell is now offering a Massive Online Open ...
Monsanto joins Environmental Defense Fund, others in sustainable agriculture coalition
. . . [W]e are officially launching the Midwest Row Crop Collaborative (MRCC): a diverse coalition working to expand on-the-ground solutions to ...
Video: Why are GMOs bad?
Why are GMOs bad? Each crop, like every organism, produces hundreds of thousands of proteins. With GMOs, one or two of ...
Minnesota governor issues executive order limiting use of neonicotinoid pesticides for farms but not homes
Minnesota governor Mark Dayton on Aug. 25 issued an executive order limiting the use of nicotine-based pesticides known as neonicotinoids ...
Non-browning GMO Fuji Apple sets positive precedent for small biotech firms
. . . . A third Arctic Apple cultivar (Fuji) is currently going through the USDA deregulation . . . Apparently the public ...
Will gene editing, corporate consolidation bring agricultural revolution?
A new day is dawning for agriculture. When asked to describe the magnitude of the coming change, experts harken back ...
India’s intellectual property rights battle with Monsanto could cripple innovation
Unfortunately, in its campaign to lessen farmers’ reliance on Monsanto seeds, the [Indian] government has chosen to use the bluntest ...
Lichens formed through symbiosis among three organisms, not two
Lichens have an important place in biology. . . . they’re composite organisms, consisting of fungi that live in partnership ...
Europe’s battle over glyphosate ‘was never about science’
André Heitz is an agronomist and a former international civil servant for the United Nations. . . . [T]he European Commission ...
Bee scientist joins Monsanto to battle varroa mites, save honeybees
About a third of the nation’s honeybees have died each winter over the past decade, and [Jerry] Hayes, an apiary ...
New biofortified GMO rice will cost farmers no more than conventional
A NEW genetically modified rice variety could improve the health of people suffering from nutrient deficiencies in Asia. The variety, ...
Why Bangladesh’s GMO eggplant success angers anti-GMO activists
This blog was written by Kevin Folta, chair of the horticultural department at the University of Florida. Kevin hosts a ...
Victoria, Canada City Council questions GMO safety, endorses mandatory labeling in Canada
Genetically engineered crops, plants and trees are not welcome in Victoria. City councillors have unanimously backed a multi-part motion last ...
Comparing conventional vs. organic: Don’t judge sustainability by yield alone
[T]wo colleagues and I published a paper in PLOS ONE titled “Commercial crop yields reveal strengths and weaknesses for organic ...
Challenging Vandana Shiva’s GMO fear-mongering
Vandana Shiva’s latest effusion against Monsanto in particular and genetically modified organisms in general appeared in this publication on Monday, and I ...
How anti-GMO imagery derails rational discussion of biotechnology
This paper explores the international controversy over genetically modified organisms (GMOs). We argue that the uncommonly high levels of opposition ...
Media shouting match over neonicotinoids isn’t helping bees
[Bees have] become pawns in the ag wars, the subject of dueling bee-death narratives. In one of those story lines, pesticides ...
China seeks to reassure consumers about GMO foods amid calls for labeling
China's agriculture ministry said it would back new laws on genetically modified (GMO) food labeling "at a suitable time" as ...
GMO labeling fight was between factions of food industry, not industry vs. consumer
[R]oughly 90% of survey respondents support mandatory GMO labeling. Consumers want to know. But the typical response when consumers want ...
Environmental Protection Agency in New Zealand finds ‘no glyphosate-cancer link’, rebukes WHO’s IARC
A new report on glyphosate [patented originally under the trade name Roundup], commissioned by the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), says ...
Anti-GMO crusader Jeffrey Smith: ‘Labeling GMOs was never the end goal it was a tactic to get them banned’
Because “public-interest” groups cloak themselves with the feel-good mantle of protecting consumers, the environment, animals, etc., the motives of such ...
