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.
Give farmers a chance: Pro-GMO activists march through Nairobi and Kampala calling for the adoption of improved seeds
Pro-GMO activists marched through Nairobi in Kenya and Kampala in Uganda on February 10 and 15, 2023, calling for the ...
Viewpoint: Do US regulatory bodies pose a national threat to safe and productive agriculture?
The Biden administration has released an updated security memorandum, which outlines the threats to the American agricultural system, as well ...
Lab meat regulations: Comparing Israel to Europe — What works best?
Israel is a hotbed of cultivated meat activity, with three of the first eight cultivated meat companies in the world ...
Changes to Farm to Fork? Will Europe open the door to ‘sustainable intensification’ in the wake of dire COP27 climate change findings?
The aim to promote inclusive forms of sustainable intensification through public-private partnerships may eventually clash with the popular view in ...
India’s potential approval of GM mustard may open door to insect-resistant cotton, anti-fungal potato and vitamin-boosted banana
While controversy has dogged the environmental release of genetically engineered (GE) mustard, other GE crops are being prepped at institutes ...
Grains make up 70% of global cropland. Here’s how perennial grains, legumes, and oilseeds could dramatically improve sustainable farming
When left undisturbed, naturally-occurring vegetation tends to grow back year after year. In agriculture, this is also true of perennial crops ...
Fresh produce on Mars? Space-adapted genes help plants survive cosmic rays and low gravity
According to NASA, five major hazards appear during long spaceflights: space radiation, isolation and confinement, distance from Earth, low gravity, ...
French Academy of Agriculture’s Catherine Regnault-Roger challenges misinformation about crop genetics in her sweeping new book
Let's be frank: Rare are the scientists who have a sense of communication. Catherine Regnault Roger is part of this ...
Gene editing poised to rescue banana production from plant disease sweeping through Central America
There are more than a thousand types of bananas in the world. But one variety, the Cavendish, is ubiquitous in ...
Agricultural drones poised to make affordable aerial weed-fighting crop protection available to small farmers
As farmers wrestle with increased weed resistance to herbicides, new management techniques offer modernized ways to combat weeds. Rapid improvements ...
Viewpoint: Farms and judicious pesticide use pose no mortal threat to endangered butterfly, Monarch Conservation Consortium concludes
Here’s the situation. The North American monarch butterfly travels every summer to the northern United States where it breeds. Its ...
11 tons of GMO corn seeds targeted for release in Kenya and Tanzania stalled in court
Four court cases have blocked the release of 11 tonnes of genetically modified maize seeds that were to be made ...
$10,500 for a bottle of perfume made with 8,000 flowers? Synthetic biology makes royal fragrances available at a fraction of that price
Perfume has historically been the indulgence of the rich. Many of the ingredients used by the nobility to scent the ...
TikTok chicken conspiracy: No, RNA technology has not been added to animal feed or eggs
"Let's talk about eggs and why there's a massive shortage and a massive increase in pricing. The RNA technology, you ...
Gene-edited wheat ‘significantly lowers levels of cancer-linked acrylamide which forms when bread is baked or toasted’
A strain of gene-edited wheat that could be sold in Britain under a new law has been shown to lower ...
Viewpoint: How militant environmentalists deceived the public into believing glyphosate is cancerous
Marketed in 1974 under the brand name Roundup, glyphosate has been praised for several decades for its unique herbicidal qualities ...
China’s cloned super-cows can produce 100 tons of milk per cow — 30% more than U.S dairy cattle
Chinese scientists have cloned three "super cows" able to produce 18 metric tons of milk per year and more than ...
Viewpoint: ‘Fashionable organic fantasies’ — Global elite at Davos WEF convention endorsed failed agriculture policies amid global food crisis
While eating caviar and sipping on fine wine, wealthy elites at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos hobnobbed with ...
‘USDA has been aware for years that its oversight of organic food fraud has been a massive failure’. Here’s what’s needed
Amended U.S. Department of Agriculture rules announced last month suggest the agency has high hopes for plans to crack down on fraud ...
What might dogs eat in a post-meat era ushered in by climate change?
As managing director of British startup Yora Pet Foods, Rankin’s job is figuring out how to lure dogs — or ...
Do consumers accept gene-edited foods? Sharing health and environmental benefits does not soften resistance, research finds
The commercial success of gene-editing technology depends on the public's acceptance of its foods. This study used data from a ...
Facing global food shortages, will ESG investing embrace sustainable gene-edited crops — or continue to reject biotech?
The need to feed an expanding population while cutting agriculture’s high greenhouse gas emissions means farming must become more efficient ...
Natural crops untouched by human tinkering? Broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and brussels sprouts are genetically-altered variants of the Brassica family
The cruciferous vegetable family, also known as the Brassicaceae or Cruciferae family, originally hails from the Mediterranean and Central Asia ...
Europe is mulling a food sustainability label. Here’s how it might work
A sustainability label, or at least the principles thereof, is expected in 2023, and is led by the European Commission’s ...
Will China’s latest Five Year Plan jump start food made with synthetic biology?
In 2021, China’s 14th five-year plan announced the importance of securing protein supply through cellular agriculture and synthetic dairy. It was the ...
Control harmful insect populations using CRISPR gene editing? Here’s how it could work
Biocentis has received investment to use CRISPR-based gene-editing to control insect populations that harm health, food security and biodiversity ...
Sustainable eating: Will politics slow adoption of cultivated foods and other technological innovations?
Cultivated meat is grown and harvested without traditional animal agriculture. A life cycle analysis of the cultivated meat industry by CE Delft, ...
