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.
Viewpoint: Why it’s harmful for regulators and consumers to trust cancer designations by the UN sub-agency IARC
IARC‘s hazard identification scheme, which assesses the carcinogenic potential of a chemical in a simple binary manner, is now obsolete ...
‘Rock star of the eco-movement’: Why does the media love anti-biotech activist Vandana Shiva despite her history of spreading misinformation?
"Rock star of the eco-movement", "Monsanto's nightmare", "Gandhi of the grain": Many media are not lacking in superlatives when they ...
How a genetic tweak boosted ethanol production and serendipitously yielded beef and dairy sustainability benefits
Enogen corn was developed using genetic engineering to add a gene for the enzyme alpha amylase which breaks down starch ...
‘Space seeds’: First rice seeds grown and harvested in orbit return to Earth
With the return of the Shenzhou-14 crew on December 4, the third batch of space science experiment samples that arrived ...
Misinformation has stymied conversation on genetic innovations in food. Here’s how climate change, the war in Ukraine and rising scientific literacy are changing people’s minds
On the Dec. 7 episode of Seed Speaks, we're addressing the myths surrounding gene editing and how those misconceptions can ...
Viewpoint: ‘Less starvation and less malnutrition are a priceless benefit of GM crops’
Over the past 20 years, academics have analyzed the yield effects following the adoption of GM crops in every market ...
Preventing billions of rooster chick deaths annually: Here’s how gene editing could end the culling of male chickens
Dr Yuval Cinnamon from the Volcani institute near Tel Aviv, who is the project's chief scientist, told BBC News that ...
GM crops safe and viable option for Africa, say African science academy experts
Agricultural scientists from across Africa have jointly added their voices to the ongoing debate on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) which ...
Precision agriculture, satellites and drones critical to feed 800 million food-insecure people
The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the fragilities in our agri-food systems and the inequalities in our societies, driving further increases ...
Addressing the plague of invasive mice: This gene drive solution could totally remove island pests
After five years of research, University of Adelaide scientists have now developed t-CRISPR, a technology that builds on a gene ...
Natural, plant-based air purifiers? This bioengineered houseplant can clean pollutants from the air
A startup in Paris has developed a plant that could take over the work of 30 houseplants — and it’s just the ...
As plants fight each other for access to sunlight, shorter crops with ‘unselfish’ genes could be more productive
Identifying genes that make plants “cooperate” with their neighbours rather than compete with them could enable breeders to develop more ...
Challenging misconceptions: Global managed honeybee population increasing, not decreasing, finds Nature study, but not keeping up with population growth
We conducted a retrospective study to examine the long-term trends for the global honey bee population and its two main ...
Genetically modified crops are key to resisting climate change, US embassy in Pakistan says
The United States is proud of its long and fruitful agricultural trade relationship with Pakistan. This relationship has grown stronger ...
Viewpoint: Philippines’ food security crisis will continue to deepen without disruptive biotechnology innovations
A major yield breakthrough in corn has occurred due to the introduction of hybrid seed which can be further galvanised ...
Bioactive compounds from potatoes and tomatoes could help us create new cancer drugs
Vegetables such as potatoes could someday help us fight cancer, according to a study completed at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland and published ...
Viewpoint: It’s a bad idea to ‘recognize anti-science reasoning’ by imposing overly stringent regulations on Canadian gene-edited crops
If a new and novel trait is added to a genetic line, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, as a part ...
Viewpoint: Gene drives are not ‘nature conservation’. Anti-GM activists call for a moratorium on the technology
Ahead of the UN Biodiversity Conference COP 15 and its Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety in Montreal over 140 civil society organisations ...
Potato farming experts push back on restrictive EPA pesticide regulations
Interacting with EPA staff and sharing the complexities of producing a high-quality, high-cost potato crop for U.S. consumers and customers ...
Viewpoint: Has the organic trend gone stale? After 10 years of growth, organic food sales have started to fall in the UK
After 10 years of slow but steady growth, sales of organic food and drink in UK supermarkets have fallen by ...
‘Their joy knows no bounds’: Nigerian farmers welcome first harvest of disease-resistant genetically modified potatoes as a possible end to the ‘nightmare’ of late-blight potato disease
Elder Isaiah Buwah is an aged potato farmer in the Bokos Local Government Area of Plateau State, North Central Nigeria ...
Carbon-neutral farming policies will fail without a science based approach, new report warns
The development and application of agricultural technologies must become a priority for the UK government if the farming sector is ...
Junk food could interfere with cognitive function, as well as increase obesity and illnesses
Ultra-processed foods have lots of added and unhealthy ingredients, such as sugar, salt, fat, artificial colors and preservatives. Examples include ...
‘We’re at war with nature’: Can the UN biodiversity convention make real progress?
Delegates from around the world are gathering in Montreal to address what United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has described ...
Targeting the food insecure: Fake news about GMOs spreads misinformation to hundreds of millions of people
To quantify the extent of misinformation about GMOs, a study was conducted by the Alliance for Science at the Boyce ...
‘Space salad’ and ‘cosmic tomatoes’: How scientists plan to limit bone density loss in astronauts during deep space voyages
Basically, the goal is to grow dwarf tomato plants (essentially cherry tomatoes) under two different light quality treatments in space, ...
COP27 signals growing focus on global food security as agricultural battle against climate change escalates
The COP27 Presidency, together with FAO, launched the Food and Agriculture for a Sustainable Transformation (FAST) Initiative to improve the quantity and ...
