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: Moderating agricultural pesticide use is a good idea — but only if it helps balance environmental and economic realities and is not just an ideological exercise
The EU is going too far in its control of pesticides. The Commission is updating the 2009 Sustainable Use Directive ...
TikTok fact check: No, malaria-fighting GMO mosquitoes released in Florida are not a vector for ‘Bill Gates’ next planned pandemic’
Claims that the Bill Gates-funded company Oxitec is responsible for a paralyzing mosquito-borne virus spreading through Florida have recently circulated ...
Bangladesh looks to agricultural technologies to address climate change impacts and food insecurity
There has been a revolution in agriculture in Bangladesh in the last three decades with the application of various modern ...
Spraying wheat with bacteria? This seed coating helps plants pull nutrients from the soil and increases yields
Lavie Bio, a subsidiary of Evogene, is a biological agriculture company that strives to bring innovation to the global food industry. The ...
10 years into the lab grown meat revolution yet there are few approved foods. What are the barriers to scaling cell meat into blockbusters?
2021 saw USD 1.4 billion invested in cultured meat businesses and 107 new start-up businesses. 25 countries have at least ...
Soybean yields in Africa are 50 per cent less than global average. A new GMO version could make up the difference — if approved
According to a study published in Science [August 18], the researchers genetically modified three genes of soybeans by effectively upgrading photosynthesis – a ...
Viewpoint: CRISPR could bring about a sustainability and productivity revolution in food and farming
Technological advances can reach far beyond robotics, automation, sensors, or the predictive and analytical capabilities of artificial intelligence. In a way, ...
Sandblasting weeds out of the ground? A ‘quick, cost-effective and simple’ way to protect crops without spraying chemicals
Weed hunters? No, it's not a joke. It's a real concept that aims to tackle a serious and costly problem ...
Viewpoint: ‘Crop safety lacks scientific rigor’ — Academic panel argues for modernized regulations in light of technological advances
Advances in genetically engineered (GE) crop breeding have encouraged new measures to be taken when analysing crop safety ...
Activists love to cite Einstein quote that without bees, life on Earth would soon perish. Snopes fact checking finds ideologues made it up
In 2002, Snopes came across a quote about bees’ importance to the global ecosystem that the Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist Albert ...
Viewpoint: Agri-bashing — How European Green Party groups have evolved into unscientific propagandists
“The organic lobby exists in Brussels, it has a storefront and is called Ifoam”, admits the environmental activist Martin Pigeon, ...
Who benefits from cell-grown meat? Livestock advocate questions wisdom of Biden’s pro-biotech executive order
While grants and funding continue to be announced for small packing plants and legislation to support small producers is a priority to some congressmen, ...
‘Power-hungry meglomaniac’ promoting ‘philanthrocapitalism’: In fundraising pitches, anti-GMO activist groups blast Bill Gates’ renewed commitment to promoting biotechnology to address food shortages and climate change
By spending billions on agriculture projects in African countries, Gates is attempting to launch another Green Revolution — one that prioritizes industrial methods like ...
Energy costs might be only real barrier to replacing farm animals and producing nutritious meals in a lab
The industrial biotech startup is working on bringing a novel protein to market — one it says will offer a ...
Analysis: ‘We can sequence an animal’s entire genome’ — How advanced biotechnology could dramatically improve meat production
The production of meat, the main protein consumed in the world, needs to grow as consumption increases. To this end, genetic ...
German National Academy of Sciences challenges myths about dangers of agricultural biotechnology
Genetically modified plants may not be cultivated on German fields. Research into them has so far been strictly regulated throughout the ...
‘Fails to protect consumers’: Federal judge rules Trump-designed, Biden-backed GMO labeling needs to include more than just computer codes and text messages; USDA appeal likely
The government’s rules for labeling GMO foods, those produced with genetic engineering, fail to protect consumers adequately because they allow ...
CRISPR is 10: A decade of gene editing refinements presents new ways to address agricultural diseases thought to be incurable
Because CRISPR applications promise so many benefits, we are impatient to see them realized. Indeed, we may complain that the ...
NY Times’ Tom Friedman: US and its Western allies need to stop living in a green fantasy world that says we can go from dirty fossil fuels to clean renewable energy by ‘just flipping a switch’
Putin thinks he’s found a cold war that he can win. He’s going to try to literally freeze the European ...
Viewpoint: Here’s how post-truth tactics became central to the anti-biotechnology playbook
Most of us are familiar with the propaganda aimed at glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. For years, activists pushed ...
How a new regulatory structure for biotechnology-tweaked crops might work — and why it’s desperately needed
Current approaches for triggering safety testing of genetically engineered (GE) crops vary substantially among countries and generally lack scientific merit, ...
What could go wrong? Analyzing the merits and consequences of gene drives
ISAAA Inc., in partnership with the Outreach Network for Gene Drive Research, launched a policy brief that tackles the importance ...
What are the barriers to engineering perennial, high-yield grain crops?
Perennial grain crops –those you only plant once before harvesting multiple times – would potentially deliver many favourable on-farm attributes ...
Non-GMO food label sees jump in popularity, especially in states that considered genetic modification labeling laws
Non-GMO Project Verified items saw much steeper growth rates than other products between 2019 and 2021, according to a report ...
CRISPR tackles deadly cassava mosaic virus disease
Work has begun to possibly develop CRISPR cassava varieties that are resistant to the deadly cassava mosaic disease (CMD), after an international team ...
Study addresses coverage of BPA and GMOs: How ideological interests skew interpretation of contested science
When controversies develop around scientific facts or technologies, the potential of science to become a tool in plays of interests ...
Viewpoint: Canada’s embrace of relaxed crop gene editing guidelines opens doors to innovation
Following lengthy public consultations and data review, Health Canada concluded crops developed through gene editing are safe and, in most ...
