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.
Gluten-free wheat? Gene editing brings us one step closer to developing an alternative for people with Celiac Disease
Scientists from the Institute for Sustainable Agriculture and the University of the Basque Country in Spain demonstrate the potential of gene ...
Decentralizing cell meat production: Could farmers actually produce cultivated meat on their own farms?
Science fiction down on the farm? What about this? Take some biopsies from live meat animals, put the cells, suspended ...
30 times increase in betacarotene in lettuce: Biofortification technique shown to dramatically increase a precursor to vitamin A
A research group from the Research Institute for Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology (IBMCP), a joint centre of the Spanish ...
‘Fearmongering’: Science magazine questions pediatrics academy’s recommendations to avoid foods with genetically modified ingredients
Guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) are a go-to source for practicing pediatricians and for some parents. But ...
A food of the future may already be here: The heat-resilient jackfruit variety breadfruit can survive erratic temperatures and hurricanes
Food systems across island nations in the Caribbean and Pacific are particularly vulnerable, being hit hard by a combination of ...
‘Meat designers’: How a start-up uses the patented 3D process ‘chaotic printing’ to lower the costs of cell-based meats
“We are meat designers,” says the Mexican startup Forma Foods, which crafts cow-less meat using a patented 3D printing process called ...
Canadian researchers in the early stages of developing effective and comparably inexpensive alternatives to glyphosate
Fifty-nine weed species around the world have developed some resistance to glyphosate, according to data from the International Survey of ...
Why consumers don’t know or care about the ‘regenerative agriculture’ movement so popular in progressive circles
The report, which surveyed US consumers from around the country, comes courtesy of Purdue’s Center for Food Demand Analysis and ...
Viewpoint: Marriage made in heaven? What would happen to science and farming if Trump wins and RFK, Jr. is rewarded with EPA cabinet post?
Could [Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] serve inside a potential second Trump administration? ... Trump voters and disaffected Democrats don’t care ...
Video: How Chinese firms finance litigation disrupting intellectual property in biotech and food distribution system
The commodification of lawsuit funding [...] opens the door to even more bad faith participation in the justice system. ...
Sustainability impact of GM crops? Nuanced study suggests mostly positive environmental effects
When the researchers delved into the body of literature, it revealed an interesting push and pull between the benefits and ...
‘Banana apocalypse’? How disease resistant bananas can help overcome a global lack of genetic diversity
“[QCAV-4] is a Cavendish,” [Prof James Dale] says. “The bananas look the same, they feel the same, they peel the ...
Sustainable forestry: CRISPR-edited trees could boost fiber production efficiency and reduce the paper industry’s carbon footprint
Humans have domesticated numerous crops, but trees have largely escaped us. This is because breeding new tree varieties takes many decades ...
SynBio future in Africa: Kenya takes the lead in applying synthetic biology to improve agriculture and fight climate dislocations
Genome editing and synthetic biology are other exciting bioscience innovations that offer viable solutions to contemporary challenges in agriculture, human ...
Gourmet mold sausage? Food waste inspiring Michelin-starred chefs
Food waste is a huge issue in the U.S., where an estimated 30% to 40% of the food supply is tossed out ...
Seed bank ransacked as Sudan’s civil war destroys a critical resource in a starving nation
More than 100 universities have been damaged or destroyed, according to Mohamed Hassan, president of the Sudanese National Academy of Sciences, ...
Anti-biotechnology campaigners embrace classic crops, are suspicious of hybrid varieties and claim genetic modification violates nature. Here’s a primer on the differences
Understanding how GMOs differ in traits, development, and farming benefits is important for farmers and consumers. Dr Eliud Kireger of ...
Africa’s most pressing need is more food. Here’s how technology could turn desperation into productivity
Africa stands at the crossroads of its agricultural revolution, confronting the dual challenge of urbanisation and a growing population. However, ...
Illinois joins growing list of states debating whether to ban cultivated meat
Two months after Florida’s ban on cultivated meat came into effect, and a month before one goes live in Alabama, ...
In Canada, cows and other livestock animals are responsible for 40 percent of methane emissions – a potent greenhouse gas. Here are some solutions
Can a shot with anything other than a bullet stifle a cow’s methane burps? If the shot is a vaccine, ...
Politicization of food: Italy’s far right has turned food into a political battleground
Since its rise to power in 2022, a coalition of far right parties led by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni ...
Organic farming and the ‘healthy foods’ industry have generated many food myths. Here are 7.
In today’s grocery stores, it’s hard to avoid the barrage of labels plastered across nearly every food product. From “organic” ...
Alternative fats from gene-edited plants and algae could pose a challenge to unsustainable palm oil and animal fat industries
With many traditional fats – from canola to coconut – under scrutiny for high saturated content or significant deforestation, many ...
Ghana pushes a tech-based sustainable agricultural revolution as climate change looms
Climate-resilient crop varieties have proven crucial for the sustenance of agricultural productivity in the face of changing climatic conditions. In ...
‘Chemical-free weed management has presented challenges’: London council’s decision to ban glyphosate flops, leads to urban weed jungle
As any gardener who has spent the summer bent over their patio knows, tackling weeds is no easy feat. So ...
10 years after the introduction GM eggplant in Bangladesh, public support for biotechnology innovation grows
The agricultural sector in Bangladesh is currently facing numerous challenges. The country is currently endeavoring to adopt modern biotechnological tools, ...
Climate-adaptive crops open door to a ‘new era of gene-edited food’
Genetic engineering remains extremely contentious in Europe. This matters because resistance to food altered by biotechnology is holding back development ...
