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.
With demand for plastic expected to triple by 2050, here’s how biotechnology can reduce its environmental impacts
In theory, many commonly used plastics can be recycled. But only about one-tenth of the plastics that have ever been ...
Spanish biologist: ‘No evidence that organic diet better for health or organic farming better for the environment’
Do foods with an organic seal have benefits? The only thing they guarantee is that they have been grown according ...
‘We can’t simply innovate our way out of danger’: Can biotechnology and other innovations help soften the blow of climate change?
Can technology save us from the worst effects of climate change? Probably not, reports a new study, “Does Directed Innovation ...
How eating ‘ultra-processed’ foods affects your mental health
Ultra-processed foods are popular because they’re convenient, ready to eat, and usually less expensive than other foods. However, they tend ...
How can US farmers adapt to climate change? Environmental Defense Fund offers five key options
Farmers have a long history of steadily increasing crop yields through technological innovation and improvements in management practices. However, as ...
India’s highest court weighs approval of GM mustard, its first biotech food crop
The row over transgenic crops in India is back. On 18 October, India’s Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) approved the ...
Viewpoint: Farmer protests in Europe challenges misguided restrictions on biotechnology innovation
Over the summer, farmers in the Netherlands vehemently protested against the government's new environmental rules. Over multiple weeks, thousands of ...
Viewpoint: ‘Farming is always unnatural’ — German farmers on why the EU needs to stop romanticizing agriculture and start embracing ‘intensive’ farming
We get too romantic about farming: “Nature is not gentle. Farming is always against nature. If you don’t do anything, ...
Agrivoltaics: With farm land scarce, solar panels can work in tandem with agriculture
Farmers installing solar panels on their land traditionally have kept their paneled acres separate from those containing their crops. But this ...
How to scale up lab-grown meat? Scientists ‘zap animal cells with a magnet’
Scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have found a novel way of growing cell-based meat by zapping animal ...
Climate change: Gene editing can help create resilient crops
Experts say enhanced access to gene editing can help create resilient crops that respond appropriately to climate change. Some agricultural ...
‘I like my carp well done please’: Human ancestors 780,000 years ago were catching and barbecuing fish
Heaps of fish teeth found at a waterlogged prehistoric site in today’s northern Israel have revealed an important new piece ...
Do trees ‘talk’ to each other through their roots? It’s become a highly-contested belief
Few recent scientific discoveries have captured the public’s imagination quite like the wood-wide web — a wispy network of fungal ...
Podcast: Genetically-engineered houseplants can scrub household toxins from the air
Indoor air contains a variety of harmful compounds. We invite many of these compounds into our homes in electronics, and ...
One-fifth of media stories on GMOs published in Africa contain misinformation, study finds
One-fifth of African media coverage of genetically modified foods contains misinformation, a new scientific study published by the Alliance for Science has ...
UN World Food Program Director: If we want to beat world hunger by 2030, we need ‘Big Ag’ and biotechnology
Ertharin Cousin has spent her entire life providing people with food: as a child of a restaurant owner couple in ...
Viewpoint: ‘Ignorance and backwardness’ drive Ugandans’ rejection of GMO foods
Last month, a section of MPs led by Bufumbira County East MP, James Nsaba-Buturo were planning to introduce a bill ...
Why antioxidant genetically-modified purple tomatoes are considered a ‘super food’
With a couple swaps of genetic material, these purple tomatoes turn a deep purple when ripe. Why? Because they’re loaded ...
‘Critical milestone’: FDA greenlights cellular chicken — first lab-grown meat — for US market
The Food and Drug Administration on [November 16] declared a lab-grown meat product developed by a California start-up to be ...
‘We’re unashamedly pro-science and pro-innovation’: Scottish politicians debate opposition to gene-edited food
The Scottish National Party, or SNP has long opposed genetic modification of food to protect the “clean, green brand of ...
Will India miss out on the emerging agricultural biotechnology revolution?
As soon as the government took the decision to release India’s first genetically-modified (GM) food crop — Dhara Mustard Hybrid-11 ...
The Séralini affair: How a discredited study set Kenya’s agricultural biotechnology revolution back a decade
GMO crops aren't new to Kenya; in 2012 we had GMO maize being imported into the country until the infamous ...
Slaughter-free, climate-friendly cultured meat on the horizon
Imagine a way to produce meat without slaughtering animals. Instead of raising livestock on farms, Uma Valeti, a cardiologist, and ...
Singapore – the first country to approve the sale of cultivated meat – has become the epicenter of alternative protein innovation. Here’s how
Singapore became the first country to approve the commercial sale of a protein grown “out of thin air”, according to its ...
‘A holy grail for agriculture’? Genetic modification can increase oil production in soy, sunflower and peanut plants by up to 18%
Scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have successfully genetically modified a plant protein that is responsible for oil ...
Onslaught of droughts and war soften EU opposition to crop gene editing
When GMO technology first arrived in Europe in the 2000s it met fierce opposition in a region that prides itself ...
UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization weighs in on the regulation of cell-based foods
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has turned its attention to cell-based foods (also known as ...
