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.
Biodiversity collapse? How ancient fossils can help signal future threats
Over the past 500 million years, five large-scale extinctions have taken place, with current predictions indicating that humans are rapidly ...
Adult Monarch butterflies not threatened by neonicotinoid insecticides, independent university study finds
Numerous studies have documented the negative effects of neonicotinoids on bees; it remains crucial to examine how neonicotinoids affect other ...
Could ice cream be good for your health?
Back in 2018, a Harvard doctoral student named Andres Ardisson Korat was presenting his research on the relationship between dairy ...
Archaeobiology provides fresh insights about the origins of food and farming
The precise drivers of agriculture remain a matter of fierce debate. Were people pushed into relying on plants for food ...
A French startup has engineered houseplants that scrub toxins from the air. Could it make a difference?
Nestled in a jelly-like growing medium, it looks like a canapé—or, possibly, the future ...
Forbidden meatball: Genetically-engineered wooly mammoth meat illustrates future of food
Australian cultured meat company Vow unveiled a meatball made of wooly mammoth meat and grown entirely in a lab. But ...
Better than obesity drugs? Here’s how this flowering shrub can naturally block fat absorption
Antioxidants in the roselle plant have anti-obesity properties that could help in food alternatives to current weight management medications, according ...
Viewpoint — Brown, white, jasmine, or basmati: Which rice is the most nutritious?
The question of the “healthiest rice” usually pits two types of rice against each other – white and brown. And ...
Nations agree on a compromise for biodiversity, what happens next is up to all of us
Around 200 nations attended the 15th Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal at the ...
Video: From scorpion-venom cabbage to human breast milk from cows, here are 9 of the most unique genetically-engineered products likely to come to market
In this video are some of the strangest genetically modified products. We know that these products aren’t handcrafted by Mother ...
Viewpoint: ‘Italy’s scientifically-unfounded fight against cultured meat is futile’ — Why the country can’t afford to block sustainable livestock alternatives
Italy is moving to become the first country in the world to ban its companies from producing lab-cultivated meat, threatening ...
Zimbabwe smallholder farmers struggle to match climate science with practice
Justin Mlalazi’s crop is only knee-high, and this being the month of March, other smallholder farmers across the country are ...
Edible circuits: Food-fueled batteries could be safely used inside the body to power the future
Researchers have started crafting edible circuits and sensors that can be used in the body. But such devices need a ...
Viewpoint: Why the EU’s Farm to Fork policy doesn’t measure up to tech-driven sustainable US agriculture
Recently, the USDA hosted the Agricultural Outlook Forum, and as someone who covers food and trade policies in Europe, the ...
Long banned in Kenya, insect-resistant genetically-modified cotton brings farmers huge profits
Despite severe drought in much of the country for four years, cotton farmers in Lamu county have had a bounty ...
Do bees have emotions and dreams?
This March, ecologist Stephen Buchmann released a book that unpacks just how varied and powerful a bee’s mind really is ...
‘Food grown in labs pose no unusual health risks’: Joint Food and Agriculture Organization and and World Health Organization report
Cell-based food production, which is the field of growing animal agricultural products directly from cell cultures, has been explored as ...
Bayer CEO ponders breakup as glyphosate litigation continues to depress profits
Incoming Bayer chief executive Bill Anderson says he is keeping an open mind on whether to break up the company ...
Here’s how synthetic biology can support eco-friendly agriculture
Methane from cattle and livestock accounted for 37.5% of greenhouse gases in 2020. Added to this is the carbon footprint from gas ...
Viewpoint: Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen list of ‘pesticide soaked’ conventional fruits and vegetables contains a confession and caveat: conventional produce is healthy
The Environmental Working Group recently released it’s 2023 Dirty Dozen list. This annual propaganda allegedly ranks the fresh produce with ...
Clear plastic from slimy seaweed? Wild algae poised to become packaging alternative of the future
There’s seven million square kilometres of seaweed already growing around the world — about the same size as the Amazon ...
How do plants respond to stress? Noisily
Stressed plants make audible sounds that can be heard many feet away, and the type of sound corresponds with the ...
Plastic nanoparticles found in food could potentially impair fetal development
Nanoscale plastic particles like those that permeate most food and water pass from pregnant rats to their unborn children and ...
Luxembourg — the first EU country to ban glyphosate — has been ordered by a court to reauthorize the weedkiller. Here’s why
Luxembourg announced on [April 3] that it was reauthorizing the marketing of glyphosate-based products, after being the first European Union ...
‘Growing chicken from animal cells’: FDA appears poised to approve second US lab-grown meat
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced this week that it has completed its second pre-market consultation with a ...
How your brain reacts to even small ‘doses’ of sugar
If you’ve ever bought a box of donuts only to find it triggers a donut phase in your life, you ...
Climate change threatens to undercut boom in seaweed farming
While scientists are still pinning down if and how kelp farming might be a climate change champion, the case is ...
