Articles

These days, without most people being aware of it, genetic engineering is spreading from the crops in the field to the animals in the barn.

In the first Jurassic Park movie, there is a scene where the head zookeeper reveals that the genetically engineered velociraptors have been systematically testing the electric fences that confine them to find out where they are weakest and where they are strongest. Remarkably prescient for a popular film, it has become, throughout its franchise, a […]

Thanksgiving dinner means only one thing for millions of us: turkey. Of the 100 million turkeys on farms around the U.S., 46 million of them will be eaten on Thanksgiving Day. Americans will consume another 22 million turkeys over the Christmas holidays, according to the National Turkey Federation. When turkeys arrive at our supermarkets, plucked […]

What will we eat in the future? What was once an rhetorical musing has now become the critical question of our time as scientists grapple with tricky questions about life—and larders—in a climate-changing world. Agriculture is both a key contributor to climate change and one of the sectors most vulnerable to those changes. That fact alone […]

A new study confirms what most scientists already know, and what proponents of industrial agribusiness either don’t get, or won’t admit: Nature abhors a monoculture. The study suggests that by restoring biodiversity, we can vastly enhance the soil’s potential to store carbon. That’s good news for the climate. And there are co-benefits: healthier, more resilient […]

Novelty, the ability to stay ahead of trends and to offer the unusual is one of the things that drives the restaurant business. There is very little regulation around the kind of food that can be served. There’s no real prohibition, for instance, against serving endangered species – though this is a questionable practice, especially […]

Our right to know if it’s GMO is officially under attack—again. On June 6, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) proposed to overhaul longstanding regulations governing genetically modified organisms (GMO). The proposed new rule would revise the agency’s current method for regulating genetically modified plants, and would exclude newer so-called “gene-edited” GMOs. In a statement, […]

Biotech developers in the EU are lobbying hard to rewrite or remove regulations intended to protect consumers and the environment. With a little ‘help’ from the White House and – thanks to an apathetic mainstream media  – a lack of public awareness, they could succeed. Tied up in a pretty bow of feeding the hungry […]

If the biotech industry has its way, the meat, eggs and milk on your plate could soon come from genetically engineered farm animals—and without laws requiring these products to be labeled, you’ll never know. Just a few years ago the idea of genetically engineered farm animals seemed like science fiction to most consumers. But it’s […]

Glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide, was once hailed as a kind of miracle solution to the problem of weeds. Today, glyphosate-based weedkillers like Monsanto’s Roundup are a disgraced product, associated with a shocking and increasing number of health and environmental problems. Glyphosate has long been promoted as a fast-acting weedkiller, as effective in small […]