High Court rules that farmers “make” seeds

Today, the Supreme Court of the United States issued their ruling on the Bowman v Monsanto case, siding unanimously in favor of Monsanto. The court rejected Bowman’s arguments that Monsanto’s patent “exhausted” when he purchased seeds from a grain elevator to plant on his farm, and affirmed that the act of growing a crop of [...]

KQED Quest on GMOs

KQED Quest, based in San Francisco, has just posted a half-hour special on GMOs called Next Meal: Engineering your Food, by Gabriela Quirós. In the wake of proposition 37 in California there has been a lot more public awareness of genetically engineered crops, but little public education about it. (Just think what those millions spent [...]

Nature Special on GE crops

This week, readers of the Biofortified Blog are in for a treat. The Journal Nature has a special feature on genetically engineered crops, complete with editorials, perspectives, and an article on the next generation of these crops featuring some people who you may find familiar. Here are a few snippets to give you a taste [...]

Natural GMOs Part 165. Novel double-stranded RNAs get served up in many conventional crops — such as rice.

(An earlier version of this post appeared at GMO Pundit blog.)

Some people have raised worries about whether novel double-stranded RNA molecules present in plant foods might be harmful to people.

Naturally occurring plants often produce novel double-stranded RNA molecules, so we have long been exposed to this potential risk.

One example of a novel [...]

GMOs cause leukemia!? Think again.

The Organic Consumers Association (among others) has gleefully announced: New Study Links GMO Food To Leukemia (also saved as a PDF). This article by Sayer Ji was originally published on Green Med Info on 12 May 2013. The paper is Hematotoxicity of Bacillus thuringiensis as Spore-crystal Strains Cry1Aa, Cry1Ab, Cry1Ac or Cry2Aa in Swiss Albino [...]

GMO Wheat and shouting “fire” in a crowded theater

A report from an activist group called Safe Food Foundation (SFF) came out last fall that caused a minor stir upon it’s first release. They claimed that they had unearthed an issue with GMO wheat being studied by the Australian CSIRO researchers. The wheat under investigation has shown to provide improvements in digestive health in [...]

Agriculture Phrases that Frustrate Me

Everywhere I go, I hear farmers argue over the word ‘sustainable’. So much so, that I really want to puke. It gets brought up at policy meetings, on social media sites, and in blog entries. When I hear farmers discussing what it means, I only hear Charlie Brown’s teacher… wha wha wha wha whaa, wha [...]

Sustainable Agriculture, What Does it Mean?

Almost everything we do in life must focus on sustainability in order to guarantee the possibilities of continuing those practices in the future. However, lately it seems the term sustainability has become more of a buzz word that implies something better, thus opening the doors for advertising and marketers to take advantage of certain elements [...]

Is Mark Bittman misinformed on GMOs?

An Excerpt by Jon Entine

It’s a challenge to name a more influential food writer than The New York Times‘ Mark Bittman—nor one less informed and more damaging to the public opinion on the issue of genetically modified crops and foods. Simply said, he is a scourge on science.

Those are strong words, and not [...]

Apple Activists vs Scientists

At the 2013 Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) Conference, I had the unique opportunity to meet and interview Neal Carter, President of Okanagan Specialty Fruits, makers of the Arctic® Apple, and also attend a protest of the same apple organized by the Organic Consumers Association. I interviewed Mike Durshmid who was leading the protest, and asked [...]

Q&A with Haven Baker on Simplot’s Innate™ Potatoes

There’s a new genetically engineered potato in town that doesn’t brown when cut or fried, nor does it make acrylamide. J. R. Simplot Company petitioned the USDA to deregulate their Innate™ potatoes, and the public comment period has just been opened up on that petition. We sent Simplot some questions about their new potatoes and [...]

Growing Plants on the Moon and Mars

Gene Giacomelli brought his research group’s Lunar Greenhouse to the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) 2013 Convention at McCormick Place in Chicago. Built in Arizona, this greenhouse can be set up underground on the Moon or Mars to grow food, cycle nutrients, and produce oxygen. It can produce one salad per day and also provide a [...]

How Wrong Is The Latest “Dirty Dozen List?”

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) says that it “helps protect your family from pesticides.” The purpose of this post is to “help protect your family from dangerously misleading information from the EWG.”

Each year since 1991, the USDA has been publishing the results from a large-scale pesticide residue monitoring program called the Pesticide Data Program [...]

Bananas for Mother’s Day

Editor’s note: This post was originally published at Thought + Food. Republished with permission from the author.

By Arpita Bhattacharjya

Flowers are traditional, yes, but this Mother’s Day I am thinking about bananas. Specifically, the plan to grow iron fortified bananas in India. This plan, predictably, is being met with resistance in some quarters. But, first, some background: India is [...]

Choosy moms choose…

On Twitter the other day, I was told that “moms choose organic” for their kids. I’m a mom (almost) and I don’t choose organic. Personally, I dislike the implication that I am doing wrong by not buying organic and I think it causes harm to spread such an idea because it might discourage people from eating healthy [...]

What are you an expert in?

Have you ever read an article, attended a panel discussion, or watched a tv show and thought: “I really wish they’d featured an expert” ?

I can’t say if it’s intentional or unintentional, but there definitely seem to be many cases where a panel discussing aspects of agriculture consists of representatives from EWG, UCS, CFS, etc and there might, [...]

Plant Science Already Feeling Sequester’s Pain

The sweeping cuts in federal spending known as the sequester are already taking a toll on scientific research. Jennifer Fletcher, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley stationed at the USDA-funded Plant Gene Expression Center, faces the sudden challenge of slashing direct research costs by 40 percent.

“I’m paying part of a lab assistant’s [...]

My new favorite word: “Hedging”

Dr. Lillian Lee, a professor of Computer Science at Cornell University, contacted me at the end of the summer to share her recently published study, Hedge detection as a lens on framing in the GMO debates: A position paper. She had out-of-the-blue read about my research interests on LinkedIn, and wanted to share this unique, interdisciplinary [...]