Crops & Food Archives - Genetic Literacy Project: Recent Episodes

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U.S. health officials on [August 10, 2026] proposed a rule change that would require food manufacturers to notify regulators before introducing new ingredients or additives into processed or packaged foods.

The proposal would change a decades-old policy that advocates have called a regulatory loophole, blaming it for allowing thousands of unvetted ingredients into the U.S. food supply.

Under the proposed rule from the Food and Drug Administration, companies would have to document and submit their safety rationale for new ingredients, giving regulators the opportunity to investigate if they see a potential risk. Currently companies can decide for themselves if an ingredient or additive is “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS, and there is no requirement to notify or submit evidence to the FDA, although some firms do.

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UPUnder the proposal, the FDA would be expected to review new ingredient submissions within 180 days. If regulators had safety concerns they could request additional information or ask the company to delay introducing the ingredient.

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Food industry officials contend their internal reviews of additives are as rigorous as the FDA’s own process.

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I spent nearly a decade leading FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. That role convinced me that food safety and nutrition are interdependent in so many ways, and if we want to make our population healthier, we need to support both.

… [R]ecord numbers of cases of cyclosporiasis have driven that message home broadly, including to consumers. FDA is currently investigating six cyclospora outbreaks, only one of which is currently linked to shredded iceberg lettuce.

Fresh fruits and vegetables, which nutritionists have been promoting for decades, are especially vulnerable to cyclospora contamination. …

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UPWhat do these higher-risk foods all have in common? As a group, they are recommended as part of a healthy dietary pattern, and are certainly among the “real foods” being promoted by the administration for better nutrition and chronic disease risk reduction.

… Over the past 18 months, the administration has focused on chemicals rather than microbes in foods and has taken numerous steps that actively undermine microbial food safety ….

… Consumers should not be faced with a trade-off between nutrition and food safety — health is made possible when food safety supports consumer confidence in fruits and vegetables. “Real foods” are vulnerable to real pathogens.

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To reach the experimental maize field, visitors first pass through a locked gate tucked between a railway line, a motorway and a school. The entire site is enclosed by fencing.

The location – Wetteren, on the outskirts of Ghent – is public by law, explains Hilde Nelissen, a plant biotechnologist at Ghent University. But it is not meant to be easy to access.

“You either know the code, or you’re trespassing,” she says.

Beyond the fence, neat rows of young maize plants barely rise above the soil. They look unremarkable. Yet small plots of land like this have been at the centre of one of Europe’s fiercest debates over agricultural biotechnology for years.

The maize is engineered using CRISPR-Cas9, a gene-editing tool whose co-developers were awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Often described as “molecular scissors” and, in EU jargon, classified as a New Genomic Technique (NGT), CRISPR-Cas9 belongs to a new generation of breeding technologies that allow scientists to make precise changes to DNA.

Unlike traditional genetic modification – used in most genetically modified organisms (GMOs), typically involving the introduction of DNA from another species – some NGTs allow “editing” of an organism’s DNA without introducing foreign genetic material.

The EU’s GMO rules, adopted in 2001 before these techniques existed, made no distinction between them. In 2018, the EU’s top court ruled that NGTs should be regulated under the same strict rules as traditional GMOs, leaving them largely confined to research plots. Spain remains the only EU country to grow a GMO crop for the market, cultivating insect-resistant maize.

That may soon change. After years of political wrangling, the EU is set to relax its rules. Under the new framework, which will be fully implemented from 2028, plants obtained with certain NGTs and involving limited genetic changes will be regulated in the same way as conventionally bred varieties.

EU researchers, especially in Belgium, Italy, Spain and Sweden, are eagerly awaiting the reform.

A decade of trialsMap: Miriam Sáenz de Tejada Source: Euractiv based on Test Biotech and Commission data Created with DatawrapperScientists like Hilde are studying traits that could eventually make crops more resilient and productive – felt as increasingly urgent as extreme weather becomes more frequent. Belgium, in particular, has endured a start of the summer marked by heavy rainfall and sharp temperature swings.

Pointing to a neighbouring control plot of conventional maize surrounded by puddles, which she uses as a comparison, Hilde explains why the plants have turned pale. “They are so yellow because of [weather] stress,” she says.

Her gene-edited maize has also been exposed to the same erratic weather, but the plants are coping noticeably better.

Experimental maize in Wetteren. [Photo by Sofía Sánchez Manzanaro]A controversial technologyEU policymakers haggled for years over whether gene-edited crops should be treated differently from GMOs, and the controversy was not confined to Brussels.

Scientists like Hilde have to grow genetically modified crops behind fences, lest they be destroyed by opponents. In 2011, activists broke into the same field where Hilde is now conducting her maize experiment and destroyed a GMO potato trial, also run by Ghent University. The action was organised by the Belgian “Field Liberation Movement”.

Like similar groups across Europe, including France’s Faucheurs Volontaires, the activists protested what they saw as a technology that could disrupt ecosystems and strip farming of its “traditional” roots.

Hilde’s own trials have not escaped attention.

A few years ago, someone cut through the fence surrounding the trial site. “We could follow the footsteps to our field trial,” she recalls while walking along that very same path. “They were going around and back out, so it’s clear that they knew where it was.”

To her relief, nothing was damaged. “You can protest,” she says. “But not destroy.”

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UPA farmer’s daughter For Hilde, who has spent more than two decades studying plant biology, gene-editing is anything but threatening. “If I was allowed, I would plant NGTs in my garden,” she quips.

She quickly dismisses any concerns over the technology’s safety, noting that people have unknowingly eaten genetic mutations for centuries.

Several hundred years ago, carrots were predominantly purple or white. “At a certain point society decided we like orange carrots, and they need to be straight,” she says. “That only occurred because there were changes in the DNA.”

But the scientist’s connection to farming is also deeply personal.

She grew up in Flanders, where her late father ran a mixed farm, raising cattle and growing crops. Eventually, however, he left agriculture as increasing mechanisation forced him to decide whether to invest heavily in expensive new equipment.

This decision, according to Hilde, reflects a broader transformation of European farming, which is no longer the “romantic profession” that many imagine.

“Agriculture today is machines, big infrastructure and big tractors,” Hilde says. While she would love to see more people grow their own food, she acknowledges that modern food production simply cannot rely on backyard gardens.

Hilde Nelissen, plant biotechnologist at Ghent University. [Photo by Maria Simon Arboleas]The patent debateNGTs are treated as conventional crops in countries including Australia, the US, Canada, Brazil, China and India.

In Europe, the fiercest debate surrounding NGTs was not so much whether they are safe. Despite concerns about traceability and labelling, the key sticking point was who would own the technology.

Relaxing the EU’s rules would make it easier for companies to commercialise gene-edited crops carrying valuable traits such as drought tolerance or pest resistance, many of which could be protected by patents.

Critics worry that this could strengthen the dominance of the world’s largest agricultural companies, harming farmers and small breeders, who could eventually be forced to pay royalties for traits that may also arise naturally.

These concerns nearly derailed the negotiations in Brussels.

The European Parliament pushed until the eleventh hour for stronger safeguards limiting patents on NGT plants. In the end, those proposals were dropped to preserve the broader agreement.

While keen on the technology, Hilde understands both sides of the argument.

“The scientist in me believes patents are necessary,” she said, arguing that companies investing heavily in research need a way to recover those costs.

But she draws a distinction between her professional and personal views.

“I’m not a patent lawyer; I’m a plant scientist,” she says. “Hilde the person is not in favour of patents. Hilde the scientist thinks patents drive innovation.”

Sofia Sanchez Manzanaro is an agrifood journalist for Euractiv and a journalist at the EU agri-food policy hub. Find Sofia on X @sofiamazzanaro

Maria Simon Arboleas is an agrifood and fisheries reporter for Euractiv. Find Maria on X @msimonarboleas

A version of this article was originally posted at Euractiv* *and has been reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit the original author and provide links to both the GLP and the original article. Find Conversation on X @Euractiv

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After the Trump administration accused the state of fast-tracking solar farms on prime farmland, New York leaders fired back last week, saying that renewables ​“empower our farmers to keep their land in use and in their family, while avoiding the threat of permanent conversion or abandonment.” That’s because farmers can lease a plot to solar developers and return it to agricultural use at the end of the array’s life, as the state officials explained in their 11-page letter.

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UP“A recent study by Cornell found that the overwhelming majority of farmers who received solar lease payments used that income to continue or even expand farming on their land, not to exit farming or scale back operations,” the leaders wrote. ​“Discouraging or inhibiting property owners’ ability to independently make choices about what they can and cannot do with their land can cause financial harm and undermine fundamental property rights.”

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This summer [2026] has seen record-breaking climate induced heatwaves scorch much of Europe, which combined with droughts and “apocalyptic” wildfires has made farming virtually impossible….So how are farmers bearing up under the pressure?

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UP[Uyen Do] adopted organic farming practices in the hope to build resilience against the climate crisis. But with the climate changing much faster than most predicted, Do says her farm is just not able to adapt quickly enough. “It’s too fast. It’s too big,” she says.

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During the recent heatwaves, which saw several days where temperatures exceeded 30C, “the environment was so hostile that the plants are so stressed they want to die because they just can’t take it” [Luke King said].

On some farms, grass to feed animals has all but stopped growing, meaning farms are having to use animal-feed reserves that have been put aside for winter, which will have knock-on effects later in the year.

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Artificial sweeteners are in the news almost constantly.

If you believe the headlines, they are terrible blights on our health that are far worse than the sugar they replace.

This isn’t always supported by the evidence, but it’s something that we love to hear, and so it gets reported on almost weekly regardless of what the data actually shows.

The most recent furor over artificial sweeteners is a perfect example. The headlines have been claiming for months that artificial sweeteners speed up cognitive decline.

According to a recent study, there are six of these ‘dangerous chemicals’, including common ones like xylitol and aspartame, that may be causing our brains to rot more quickly.

The study has been covered by hundreds of media outlets ….

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UPThis is all made especially remarkable given that it doesn’t really show any issues from artificial sweeteners at all.

The study itself is a very simple piece of observational research.

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One big thing is that food frequency questionnaires don’t really measure intake of food. They measure what people THINK they eat, but we know that we are often unreliable historians.

Most of these questionnaires ask about the last 12 months of eating, and people rarely remember their food intake for that long with any degree of accuracy.

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As letters to the journal have noted, there are also serious questions about the biological plausibility of the claim.

Some of the sweeteners are natural substances, one is actually a very rare form of sugar, and all of them are very different molecules. It would be extremely unlikely for all of these different chemicals to have the same impact on the brain.

…

There’s also the problem of reverse causality – that is, people who were already experiencing brain declines due to diseases like diabetes or heart disease may have been more likely to eat and drink artificial sweeteners at the start of the study.

This is an issue that’s hard to correct with the sort of analysis that we see in this paper.

…

Despite decades of fearmongering when it comes to artificial sweeteners, the reality is that they are very well-tested and generally not harmful.

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The response to the current large outbreak of food-related illnesses caused by a microscopic parasite is a communications failure, not a failure of the investigation.

A few characteristics of Cyclospora make it tricky to chase down. Because it will not grow in culture, the standard playbook doesn’t apply. With most foodborne bacteria, a lab grows the organism, sequences it, and uploads the genetic fingerprint to PulseNet, the national network that flags when a case in one state matches a case in another.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has instead been working from partial genotyping, because Cyclospora‘s genome is complicated enough to defeat the sequencing methods that work for bacteria. Cyclospora contamination on produce is often sparse and unevenly distributed, and it tends to sit close to the limit of what a test can detect, which is how contaminated lettuce ends up testing clean. Investigators were left with the oldest tools in the kit: interviews and shipping records.

Important early clues widely missedDr. Mike Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (which, of course, publishes my CIDRAP Op-Eds), taught me that when cases start rolling in, the demographics of who is getting sick can hand you an important early clue. These cases skewed heavily toward adults, with the CDC putting the median age at 44 across a range from 1 to 89 years, and the relative absence of young children pointed toward something green rather than something fruit.

If you have young kids you know exactly why. They are devoted fruit eaters. (I used to joke that my daughter was going to turn into a strawberry.) But more spotty toward veggies.

That narrows things, but the hunt continues. There are other important factors, too, like understanding how a growing region is organized into blocks, when each produce item was cut and by whom, how product from different fields gets combined at a processor, how long it takes to move from a field in central Mexico to a restaurant in Michigan, and how fast a perishable product cycles off the shelf.

That knowledge does more than point at a culprit. It also helps estimate how many people could have been exposed and where. It tells you when contaminated products should have cleared the shelves and new exposures should stop, even though reported counts will keep climbing for weeks afterward. Because molecular typing cannot deliver the clean fingerprint that is available in a bacterial outbreak, it is also central to deciding whether a case in one state belongs with a case in another. Trace-back is a supply chain exercise as much as an epidemiologic one.

Michigan went through ingredient-level food histories from 190 people who had eaten at Taco Bell before falling ill, and 90% of them had eaten iceberg lettuce. The FDA’s trace-back investigation followed the paper backward, converging on one supplier and then on a single independent farm in central Mexico that Taylor Farms says accounts for less than 1% of the US iceberg supply. The recall came July 17.

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UP9 states in the outbreak, but 41 affected overallThis is the largest documented Cyclospora outbreak in US history, and the coverage has that part right. What has reached the public is a scary number that keeps going up.

It misses the fact that, while cyclosporiasis—which is what a Cyclospora infection is called—has now been reported in 41 states, the outbreak is only in nine. The numbers being reported measure different things. The CDC and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have included 1,947 confirmed cases in the nine-state Taco Bell outbreak, which epidemiologic and trace-back evidence links to iceberg lettuce, while the CDC separately reports more than 4,000 confirmed domestically acquired cases nationally since May.

In addition, thousands of samples from patients are still awaiting CDC confirmation, plus several hundred more in travelers who got sick abroad. Some states count probable and confirmed cases together, so their totals run higher still. Stack all of it, as plenty of coverage has, and you get a single national outbreak that doesn’t exist.

Consider what happened when the CDC added four states to the outbreak on July 24. It read as though the outbreak had spread, but investigators think those patients may have gotten sick around the same time as the patients in the original five states, and simply took longer to connect to the same source.

Stack all of it, as plenty of coverage has, and you get a single national outbreak that doesn’t exist.

Cyclosporiasis turns up somewhere every summer, following a seasonal pattern that is well established even if its exact causes are not, and outbreaks are frequently tied to fresh produce. Several states, including California and New Jersey, have said their counts this year are running in line with typical seasonal trends. North Carolina thinks its own increase is about parsley and cilantro, neither of which has emerged as a national signal, and the FDA is separately investigating a cluster of at least 72 people with no source identified at all.

Folding all of that into one running total costs us more than public calm. It hides the possibility that several outbreaks are happening at once.

Illinois, one of the four states added last week, says its July case reports are running at levels the state has not seen since 2018. Illinois is right that 2018 is the year to think about, though the important lesson isn’t the case count. That summer brought 511 cases tied to a Fresh Express salad mix served at McDonald’s, 250 tied to Del Monte vegetable trays, and a third outbreak in Texas that never had a source identified at all.

A cumulative tally is a surveillance instrument, and an important one, but it does not tell you whether you are at risk this week, which is the very thing people want to know.

Picture one person inside that count. She eats a salad at the end of June and feels fine for a week. She spends a few more days assuming it’s a stomach bug, sees a doctor in the second week of July, and gets tested only because someone thinks to request Cyclospora testing, which many routine stool tests and gastrointestinal panels don’t include. The lab confirms toward the end of the month. Her interview comes after that. Whether she belongs to this outbreak or to the ordinary summer background data may not be settled until August.

Every case on every one of those charts is carrying some version of that lag, which is why the FDA has said confirmed counts will keep climbing well after the recall.

Likely more than one wave of exposureOn July 24, the CDC finally published an epidemic curve for this outbreak, plotting the 1,947 outbreak-associated cases by illness onset rather than by report date. There are two distinct peaks: one (when the person first had symptoms) cresting around June 25 and a second (when the sickness was reported) around July 10, with a deep valley between them.

That separation is substantial enough to suggest exposure may have come in more than one wave. Working back through Cyclospora‘s usual incubation period of about a week would place those exposures near mid-June and again around the start of July. Lettuce isn’t harvested once a season and held in storage like corn or soy. It’s cut more or less continuously and eaten within days, so illness follows fairly closely behind whenever the contaminated product moved. That makes a gap this deep more consistent with separate windows of exposure than with one prolonged stretch of it.

A cumulative tally is a surveillance instrument, and an important one, but it does not tell you whether you are at risk this week.

The first of those illness peaks had risen and fallen before the CDC issued its health advisory on July 14, and before the FDA publicly named the lettuce two days later. Whether the two waves represent separate contamination episodes—one product contaminated intermittently across different harvest lots, or something else—the curve alone cannot say, and nobody else has either. It arrived the same day the outbreak grew to nine states, a week after the recall and long after the story had largely been told as one steadily rising national number.

Producing that picture is the one thing no state could have done on its own. Michigan posts case counts by date reported, updated weekly and labeled accurately as such. Others post illness-onset curves, or county maps, or twice-weekly tallies. Every one of those answers a question about a single jurisdiction, and none of them can tell you whether two states are experiencing the same outbreak, because no state can answer a multistate question using its own data no matter how carefully those data are collected. That assembly sits a level above all of them, and it took until the fourth week of July.

Too late, and then too fastThe messaging made it worse. The CDC’s Health Alert Network advisory arrived July 14, roughly 10 weeks after the CDC began receiving reports of a national rise in cases.

Days later, the FDA published notice of a Cyclospora-positive lettuce sample on Saturday, July 18, retracted it the next day, and didn’t explain the sequence until the afternoon of July 20. That sample had come from routine border screening rather than from recalled product, and the epidemiologic and trace-back case implicating Taylor Farms lettuce never rested on it. By then “false-positive” had run the news cycle, and plenty of people came away thinking the company had been cleared, in an investigation already drawing political scrutiny.

Osterholm, who I am convinced may be clairvoyant, made this argument in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1997, after Texas and Houston officials named California strawberries in a cyclosporiasis cluster that turned out to be tied to Guatemalan raspberries. The obligation to warn people is real, he wrote, and it has to be weighed against a cost of being wrong that gets paid twice: once by whoever was falsely accused, and again by every future warning the public quietly stops believing. He published the same argument again in 1999, under the title “Lessons Learned Again,” after the outbreak repeated.

That second cost is not abstract. It looks like people who stop buying lettuce of any kind for the rest of the summer, growers who lose a season over it, and someone scrolling past the next recall notice because the last one seemed to get walked back. It also looks like a public that can no longer tell the difference between a point-source outbreak (in which illnesses are traced to a common food source) and the ordinary seasonal background of a reportable disease, which means every summer from here on starts to feel like an emergency.

Two right answers, one messageThere were two right answers here, and only one message going out. For someone on chemotherapy or living with a transplant, cyclosporiasis isn’t a rough week. It runs longer, relapses, and brings complications that need real clinical attention. Telling that person to skip lettuce entirely while the source was still unknown was good advice.

For most of the country, though, it wasn’t. Craig Hedberg, PhD, at the University of Minnesota, has been making that case all month, and he is right that broad avoidance guidance without a known source does more harm than good. Getting both messages out at once means deciding who you are talking to and saying so plainly.

The detective work in this outbreak happened in state health departments, and it was good. Hedberg has described what happens next: States recognize increases well before the data are compiled federally into anything officials can act on.

What it leaves behind is a patchwork whereby some states monitor effectively and others can’t, which doesn’t work for a product grown on many farms, mixed at a central processor, and shipped everywhere.

That delay is not inevitable, but it is getting harder to avoid. Someone has to gather, standardize, and assemble what the states are finding, and researchers at Johns Hopkins have documented the erosion of the federal food safety staffing, funding, and enforcement that that work depends on. What it leaves behind is a patchwork whereby some states monitor effectively and others can’t, which doesn’t work for a product grown on many farms, mixed at a central processor, and shipped everywhere.

Everyone working this outbreak has been doing the best they can with a patchwork of information, in front of a public that is understandably worried and asking every day what is safe to eat.

Nuance and details matter a whole lot here, and all of it got flattened into a single rising number. A beat to step back and take the 10,000-foot view would have gotten us communication that was more streamlined, more accurate, and far more useful to the people trying to figure out what to feed their families.

Jess Steier is a public health scientist dedicated to bridging the gap between complex scientific evidence and public understanding. Jess is the Founder of Unbiased Science, CEO of Vital Statistics Consulting, and Executive Director of The Science Literacy Lab (a 501c3 non-profit organization).

A version of this article was originally posted at the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota and is reposted here. Any reposting should credit both the GLP and original article. Find CIDRAP on X @CIDRAP

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As temperatures rise, New Zealand’s dairy farmers face a growing challenge: keeping cows cool enough to remain productive.

Heat stress can reduce milk production, harm animals and lower the environmental efficiency of dairy farming. For an economy so heavily reliant on dairy exports, the stakes are significant.

Over recent years, scientists have been exploring whether gene editing can deliver dairy cattle better able to cope with warmer temperatures, while producing fewer methane emissions. There is also potential for dairy products that carry valuable functions, such as being allergy-free.

Yet, regardless of the scientific promise behind such products, they still must gain consumer acceptance. Would shoppers actually buy gene-edited milk?

Our recently published study suggests they might, particularly if the products offer clear personal benefits and are priced competitively.

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UPWhat we asked consumersGene editing enables specific tweaks to be made to an organism’s DNA. This can be done to promote desirable traits or remove undesirable ones – and without necessarily introducing new genetic material.

That sets it apart from traditional genetic modification technology and is seen by some researchers as a more precise approach that may prove more acceptable to consumers.

To understand how people would feel about milk from gene-edited “climate-smart” dairy cows, we surveyed nearly 1,100 New Zealand consumers. Rather than simply ask whether they supported the technology, we wanted to know the trade-offs they might make when faced with real purchasing decisions.

In a choice experiment designed to mimic supermarket shopping, they chose between conventional milk, organic milk and three forms of gene-edited milk.

These included a standard version, an allergy-free version designed to improve digestibility and a version incorporating a “COVID-protection” feature, based on research into milk carrying protective antibodies.

Because cows have not yet been gene-edited for commercial dairy production, our study did not provide participants actual gene-edited milk. Instead, they were asked to evaluate a series of hypothetical products and price points designed to reflect future supermarket choices.

They were first given information about gene editing and “climate-smart” milk before repeatedly selecting their most and least preferred options across a series of shopping scenarios.

This allowed us to examine not just attitudes towards gene editing, but how consumers weigh price, familiarity and potential benefits.

Price and benefits matter mostOverall, we found conventional milk to be the most preferred option. This wasn’t surprising. Consumers often trust familiar foods more than unfamiliar technologies, especially when it comes to products they consume regularly.

But the study also showed that consumer resistance to gene-edited milk is neither fixed, nor particularly high. When it was offered at a lower price than conventional milk, for instance, acceptance increased significantly.

Fig. 5. Logit preference estimates for different milk types at different price levels (Note: the largest 95% confidence interval was ±0.05 on the logit scale).
We also found acceptance improved when the milk offered clear and easy-to-understand consumer benefits.

Among all the gene-edited products we tested, allergy-free milk was the most popular. This suggests consumers may be more open to food technologies when they can clearly see how the product benefits them personally.

Branding a product allergy-free, for instance, is tangible and easy to understand. By contrast, broader environmental or technical claims can feel more abstract or uncertain to many consumers.

Gene edits are usually target traits such as reduced disease susceptibility and heat tolerance, but can include removing allergens and increasing quality/production. Credit: Tad S Sonstegard et alWhile some consumers found the idea of milk with COVID-protection features appealing, others may have been sceptical or fatigued by pandemic-related messaging.

Compared with allergy-free milk, the health benefit was also more complex and potentially harder to understand.

A pathway to acceptance?As climate pressures intensify, food systems around the world will likely face difficult trade-offs between sustainability, affordability and productivity.

Technologies such as gene editing may become more attractive, as they promise faster and more targeted solutions than conventional breeding methods.

Our findings suggest there may be a pathway towards greater consumer openness, particularly when innovations deliver direct and meaningful benefits, rather than vague promises of future sustainability.

At the same time, the study shows consumers still value familiarity and simplicity. Traditional products continue to hold a strong advantage, while price remains a major factor shaping purchasing decisions.

Gene-edited foods may therefore succeed not by replacing conventional foods overnight, but by gradually earning consumer trust through clear benefits, affordability and transparent messaging from producers.

For all the cutting-edge science that surrounds them, the future of these innovations ultimately depends on how well consumers believe they fit into their everyday lives.

Damien Mather is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at University of Otago. Follow Damien on Linkedin

Goetz Laible is a Honorary Associate Professor of Molecular Medicine and Pathology at the University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau. Follow Goetz on Linkedin

Kara Xiaohui Ma is an Assistant Research Fellow and PhD Candidate in Marketing, at the University of Otago. Follow Kara on Linkedin

A version of this article was originally posted at Conversation and has been reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit the original author and provide links to both the GLP and the original article. Find Conversation on X @Conversation_US

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“People have been told so many times now that processed foods are bad,” to the point that they can start to seem “evil,” said Angela Zivkovic, PhD, a professor in the University of California, Davis’ department of nutrition.

New research suggests it’s not that simple. Your overall diet quality seems to matter more than whether you eat processed foods, said Xiaowen Wang, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who led the new study.

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UPFor the new research … Wang’s team drew on data from three studies that followed more than 200,000 U.S. adults for decades. …

The researchers analyzed the overall quality and processing level of participants’ diets. For comparison’s sake, they focused on plant-based foods rather than those that came from animals. Then, they sorted participants into four categories:

• Healthy and ultra-processed (for example, lots of whole-grain cereals and plant-based dairy substitutes)
• Healthy and minimally processed (oatmeal, fresh fruits and vegetables, home-cooked meals)
• Unhealthy and ultra-processed (fast food, packaged snacks, sodas)
• Unhealthy and minimally processed (white rice, potatoes, homemade desserts)

Overall diet quality, they found, was a better predictor of health problems than processing level.

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“Our job here at Psy Ops is to panic the enemy, to blunt his will to fight. A Psy Operator must know the customs and habits of the enemy, the current dissensions, anxieties, and fears to determine vulnerability. To engage the enemy, you must know the enemy inside out. You must fill him with fear, and not just fear of dying.”

—Quote from: The General’s Daughter (Movie, 1999)

Influencers use the same tactics as the Army’s Psyops. They learn people’s anxieties and fears to know consumer’s vulnerability. One thing most people (75%) fear is losing control. Components of packaged food, such as pesticide residues, that people aren’t in control of fits this definition. In fact, a Reuters poll this year found that 78% of people are concerned. You’re in large company if you feel that pesticides—killers of insects, weeds, fungus, rodents, worms, and bacteria—are unsafe.

The “cide” in pesticide is a suffix that means “to kill” and it’s used in suicide, homicide, and genocide. It’s just common sense that people are concerned about the use of pesticides on food they consume every day.

But are pesticides safe?Why would any scientist say they are safe? It’s certainly true that they kill weeds and bugs—so why would they be safe for us to consume? First, the amount of pesticide we consume is extremely tiny, just residues. Second, the pesticides we spray aren’t the only pesticides that are killing bugs. Plants wouldn’t be with us today if they hadn’t evolved to be able to repel or kill bugs themselves. Over millions of years of natural selection, plants developed chemicals that either taste horrible or actually kill insects, emit odors that attract bodyguards like wasps to kill the insects, or produce toxic glue. Some plants even eat the bugs that try to eat them—like Venus flytraps.

But evolution is a competitive process and insects, like caterpillars and aphids, have been evolving right alongside plants to defeat their defenses.

They’ve done a pretty good job: without the pesticides we spray to help plants out, insects would claim about 30% of crops. One estimate puts potential losses at 78% for fruit, 54% for vegetables, and 32% for cereal. For example, pesticides kill spider mites, which lay shiny, round, white or pale-yellow eggs—too small to see—attached by a sticky substance on plants, then spin fine webbing around them.

The Food Quality Protection Act requires the EPA to ensure that each pesticide used on food is safe for children, with a ten-fold safety factor (meaning the amount used is ten times less than the amount considered safe for children). Children are like the canary in the coal mine— they’re more sensitive than adults.

But still, they are poisons, and four out of five people are concerned about that. There is an option: organic produce. After all, Pew Research has found that nearly one in two (45%) Americans think that eating organic produce is healthier. Of course, some people believe all kinds of things—like eating eggs raises your cholesterol (it won’t, dietary cholesterol isn’t the same thing as blood cholesterol).

Most research has shown that organic produce (fruits and vegetables) isn’t healthier than conventional produce. Conventional and organic foods have the same amount of nutrients—fats, carbohydrates, and fiber. In fact, some organic foods may contain more heavy metals than their conventional counterparts. And organic is not pesticide-free. Even in the famously cautious EU, 134 active pesticides, such as pyrethrins, are allowed on organic produce.

A systematic review found that the belief in organic food’s superiority over conventional food is largely subjective, based mainly on fear. Playing on those fears is the same thing the Army does with enemies: psychological operations.

But still, are pesticides in fact unsafe?If, by “safe”, you mean that no one ever will ever be harmed in any way by pesticides, the answer is no. The U.S. EPA has estimated that 10,000 to 20,000 farmworkers are poisoned annually from exposure, leading to nausea, seizures, and even chronic conditions—largely due to misuse of personal protective equipment and lack of training on how to use it.

As for consumers, most issues arise from people misusing pesticides in their own gardens. What about the rest of us?

Just like pesticides, you can find articles linking water, vegetables, fruits, meat, poultry, and highly processed foods to chronic disease. “Linked” means that there is a possibility of harm, but actual causation has not been proven. Even so, just like pesticides, we can’t say any food is safe for everyone, all of the time, and under all conditions.

It’s not just the military and their psyops. Marketers know what you are afraid of—and how to keep it aroused.

Richard Williams is a Senior Affiliated Scholar, the former Director of the Regulatory Studies Program, and the former Vice President of Policy Research at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He is also the author of Fixing Food: An FDA Insider Unravels the Myths and the Solutions. Follow Richard on Substack

A version of this article was originally posted at the Public Health Without Politics Blog and has been reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit the original author and provide links to both the GLP and the original article.

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During the American heat dome or Europe’s summer swelter and the hottest June days on record, we no longer have to endure the media hyperbole or the activist misanthropy, blaming man (industry, capitalism, consumers…) for the planetary destruction. Now we are sometimes reminded, in a deadpan tone, that these warm days are in keeping with climate models, but it is often greeted with a reaction similar to when my doctor tells me my excess weight gain is related to my eating habits.

After two decades of well-choreographed campaigns and narrative control that merged all environmental health issues into a centralized campaign against consumption, trade, capitalism and industry, with billions in foundation funding flowing in to enrich the activist movements, within a year, the tap was literally turned off. Everything just stopped. Why?

• The activist groups did not run out of money (foundation donations often stretch from three to five years).
• They did not run out of issues (none of the policies they demanded was actually delivered).
• These forever campaigners simply ran out of legitimacy.

The elections of 2024-25 across Europe and North America delivered a blow to the environmental left with economic, social and border issues taking priority in the political shift to the right. Over the last two years, policies, procedures and funding have migrated towards more economic, industrial and jobs development and away from the intangible feel-good fluff that the activists had pushed to the center of the policy arena. Buzzwords like simplification, deregulation, rationalization quickly replaced the environmental totems of circularity, decarbonization and degrowth. The electorate’s clear message was received in the policy halls of Brussels, Berlin and Washington.

Turning the Crisis InwardThe NGOs reacted as they have always done, not by reflecting and seeking a good compromise, but by declaring an imminent crisis. But the fabricated crisis was no longer a catastrophic climate collapse or a mass ecological extinction, but rather the threat to their own existence. Ever polarizing, the activists ran a campaign claiming the far-right was on a mission to silence NGOs (and free speech). Maybe it was the perpetual polarizing and lack of reflection or compromise that had turned so many off of their issues. The Firebreak published an article how their portrayal of the good activist fighting the “bad guys” was not setting the right tone and was not even singing the right hymn to their choir.

More recently, the activists have resorted to triage to try to make it through the lean years. Two weeks ago, the smarmy Good Lobby published their recent sales pitch called: “An Advocacy Survival Guide for Civil Society” claiming that the nature of the game had changed. Correction: the audience decided to watch other more important games. Of course, Alberto has been getting too fat living high off the foundation funding hog as the hypocrite blindly attacks other forms of advocacy (lobbying) funding so maybe he should follow his own advice.

Last week, a group of 60 activist NGOs, including the ever-opportunistic Good Lobby, published an Open Letter to the European Commission. The letter was quite remarkable in that their demands for better regulation were what these same groups had been condemning only three years earlier. The NGOs were demanding to be allowed to engage in dialogue while it was not too long ago that they were gleefully kicking their industry enemies out of the European Parliament and Commission. They demanded transparency, but the NGOs are the ones who do not reveal the billionaires and other interest groups behind their foundation funding. They demanded impact assessments. Good, so does that mean Europe will revise regulations like the Sustainable Use of Pesticides Directive where the NGOs got their way by rejecting the need for any impact assessments?

The NGO activist groups do face a crisis situation, but the crisis is coming from within.

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UPLooking to the Post-NGO WorldThis is not the first decline in NGO influence, and they will be back, probably stronger and even more vengeful. What is dangerous is for other stakeholders to consider the recent shifting sands as the end of the uncomfortable decades of activist interference and use it as a chance to go back to business as usual. Rather, this is an opportunity to reshape the post-NGO world to redefine how stakeholders engage in the policy process. Here are four key changes to ensure a rational policy process in future.

• Clarify the role of foundations. With the professionalization of philanthropy (consultants creating networks of fiscal sponsorships and dark donor-advised funds), foundations have become billionaire-led activist NGOs. These groups pose as campaign organizations but as they don’t legally exist, they don’t have to declare their funding or be held accountable. The rules need to change so these groups follow the same rules of transparency and accountability as every other stakeholder group.
• Differentiate NGOs from activist lobby groups (APEs). The Firebreak has argued that most policy activist groups abuse their status as NGOs, pretending to be in the same league as humanitarian organizations or aid charities, claiming tax-free status while spending hundreds of millions on salaries, political donations and lobbying campaigns. They should be classified as Alternative Policy Enterprises (APEs), lobby groups whose millions in funding from special interests should not be tax deductible or classed differently from industry lobbyists. Meanwhile, those genuine NGOs trying to run food banks, shelters and development aid programs have to compete with these non-transparent lobbyists trying to impose their elitist dogma on society.
• Set stricter conditions for evidence in policy processes. For the last 20 years, NGO groups have done a good job discrediting industry research and excluding their evidence from the policy process. But the activist science they put forward is lower quality and designed to generate fear and doubt rather than facts and evidence. Since NGOs are no longer dictating the narrative at the present time, a clear, objective standard of scientific research and data should be established that would encompass the best available research and lab practices, regardless of its source.
• Consider environmental activist campaigns as marketing and PR activities rather than policy actions. The NGOs are communications organizations trying to shape the public narrative to enhance business opportunities (donations, funding, alternative products…). Their evidence is neither scientific nor economic but designed to persuade via the emotional triggers of fear and outrage. Some examples:

– The anti-pesticide campaigns intend to push frightened consumers into buying organic food. Organic is nothing more than a high-priced marketing concept for the affluent elite to impose on struggling consumers.

– The catastrophic climate agenda is woven into the promotion of renewables and promoting a post-capitalist neo-Marxist ideology.

– The plastics fear campaigns (microplastics, waste, endocrine disruption…) work in tandem with alternative industries like copper, steel, glass and paper manufacturers.

– The litigation industry is profiting nicely from the activist PR work in all of these fear business centers.

We need to consider the activist APEs campaigns and lobbying, not as policy engagement, but as marketing and PR for other interest groups.

The big problem for the environmental NGOs is that their marketing campaigns continue as usual, but not many people are buying them. It is time to change the business model.

David Zaruk is the Firebreak editor, and also writes under the pen-name The Risk Monger. David is a retired professor, environmental-health risk analyst, science communicator, promoter of evidence-based policy and philosophical theorist on activists and the media. Find David on X @Zaruk

A version of this article was originally posted at Firebreak and has been reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit the original author and provide links to both the GLP and the original article. Find Firebreak on X @the_firebreak

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Climate change is speeding up the decline in important nutrients in our food, according to 15 leading researchers from four continents – including Prof. Asaph Aharoni of the plant and environmental sciences department at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot.

“This is not a distant threat to health,” he told The Jerusalem Post in an interview. “Already today, up to two-thirds of the world’s population does not get enough essential micronutrients – including folic acid, vitamin B2, calcium, iron, and iodine – from their diet, a situation that can lead to hidden hunger,” he added.

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UPIn a comprehensive review published in the prestigious journal Nature under the title “Genetic technologies to enhance crop nutritional value under climate change,” the researchers presented a roadmap for protecting and improving the nutritional quality of crops in the face of climate change.

They advocated the use of advanced genetic technologies – including CRISPR gene editing – to increase the vitamin and mineral content of crops while also making them more resilient to a changing climate.

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here

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On June 17, 2026, the European Parliament reached a historic milestone by endorsing New Genomic Techniques (NGTs), sending a powerful global signal that science-based innovation is essential for addressing climate change and strengthening food security.

For Asia, the implications could be profound.

Home to nearly 60% of the world’s population, Asia faces the daunting task of feeding billions while confronting some of the world’s harshest climate impacts.

Rising temperatures, droughts, floods, salinity intrusion, emerging pests, and global crises are placing immense pressure on agricultural systems.

According to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), countries such as Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan remain highly vulnerable to geopolitical shocks because of their dependence on imported fertilizers and natural gas from the Gulf region. The ongoing Iran conflict, the latest disruption to global fertilizer markets, underscores this vulnerability.

Against this backdrop, NGTs offer a promising tool for developing climate-resilient crops, reducing reliance on pesticides and fertilizers, and strengthening food security, particularly for smallholder farmers.

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UPFor decades, the European Union maintained some of the world’s strictest regulations on agricultural biotechnology, influencing policy-making far beyond Europe. Many countries in Asia and Africa adopted similarly cautious approaches.

Europe’s endorsement of NGTs therefore marks a significant shift, demonstrating that innovation and environmental sustainability can go hand in hand.

Several Asian countries are already moving ahead. China has made gene editing a national priority to enhance food security, while Japan has established enabling regulations and commercialized gene-edited foods.

India is actively exploring genome editing to develop climate-resilient crops, and countries including the Philippines, South Korea, Singapore, Vietnam, and Bangladesh are advancing research and regulatory reforms.

Yet technological potential alone will not be enough. Historically, biotechnology research has relied heavily on private investment and donor support.

Today, shrinking research budgets, limited technical expertise, and underinvestment in public research institutions remain major constraints, particularly in developing countries.

Realizing the benefits of genome editing will require evidence-based policymaking, sustained public investment, and long-term government commitment to translate scientific advances into practical solutions for farmers.

Europe’s decision should not be treated as a blueprint to be followed uncritically. Rather, it should encourage countries such as Bangladesh to engage in evidence-based decision-making and assess how emerging technologies like genome editing can contribute to more resilient, sustainable, and food-secure agricultural systems.

Arif Hossain is Regional Head of Asia, WePlanet International and Executive Director at Farming Future Bangladesh. Find Arif on X @arif4science

A version of this article was originally posted at Dhaka Tribune and has been reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit the original author and provide links to both the GLP and the original article. Find Dhaka Tribune on X @DhakaTribune

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2026 may well be remembered as the year global agriculture began to untangle itself from decades of precautionary red tape. Earlier this year, the agricultural biotechnology landscape shifted in two places that have long defined opposite poles of the regulatory debate: the European Union, historically the home of exceedingly precautionary biotech rules, and the United States, a pro-innovation leader now eyeing a massive regulatory overhaul.

The EU Parliament recently approved a landmark framework for regulating New Genomic Techniques (NGTs). Many plants developed with CRISPR or other precise gene-editing techniques will now be treated more like conventional crops by regulators than transgenics, commonly referred to as “GMOs.” Meanwhile, the US Department of Agriculture is weighing a clean break from its legacy Part 340 biotechnology rules, in place since the late 1980s.

Together, these moves mark a broader retreat from process-based regulation toward more risk-based and technology-agnostic frameworks. Product-based regulations ask what a product does, what risks it plausibly poses, and whether regulation will actually improve safety—rather than focusing on the technology used in development. This is about more than administrative streamlining; it’s the key to a new wave of agricultural innovation.

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UPWhile the EU’s NGT reforms and the US’s potential overhaul are steps in the right direction, true modernization demands that all genetically engineered products—gene-edited and transgenic alike—be treated the same as conventionally bred crops. Continuing to differentiate between these categories as a proxy for risk conflicts with the scientific consensus that gene-edited and transgenic crops don’t pose new risks compared to conventional breeding, often making changes to a plant’s DNA with greater speed and accuracy and fewer unintended changes. Only by aligning regulations with established science will we unlock the benefits of biotechnology innovation in agriculture.

Emily Bass is Associate Director of Federal Policy, Food and Agriculture at Breakthrough Institute. Follow Emily on X @EmilyJane_Bass

A version of this article was originally posted at The Ecomodernist and has been reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit the original author and provide links to both the GLP and the original article. Find Breakthrough Institute on X @TheBTI

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Over the past month, Texas and Louisiana both enacted first-in-the-nation legislation that created specific labeling requirements for food products that contain certain ingredients. For both of these proposals, the food labeling provision was but one of a broad set of policies aimed at making Texas and Louisiana “healthy again.” This article will discuss the specifics of the bills enacted and highlight the potential impacts they will have on the American food system. To read the bills, click here and here.

Background on “MAHA”

Make American Healthy Again, or “MAHA,” is the name given to the nutrition and health initiative that Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert Kennedy has spearheaded. Specifically, on February 13, 2025, President Trump signed an Executive Order establishing the Make American Healthy Again Commission, and designated Secretary Kennedy as the Commission’s chair. Commission members included United States Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Martin Makary, Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, and more. The Commission was tasked with the mission of “advis[ing] and assist[ing] the President on how to best exercise his authority to address the childhood chronic disease crisis.” In alignment with this mission, on May 24, 2025, the Commission released the “MAHA report” – a publication that highlights their initial findings. Specifically, the report identifies “four primary drivers” that the Commission believes caused the rise of childhood chronic disease and lays out ten next steps to developing the Commission’s comprehensive strategy. This strategy is due in August 2025.

While the MAHA report itself did not include any tangible policy actions, Secretary Kennedy has been directing the movement on several MAHA food-related priorities through his role as head of HHS. For example, FDA announced its six-pronged plan to phase out synthetic petroleum-based color dyes from the food supply, rolled out a new food Chemical Review Program, approved new natural color additives, and established a joint nutrition-focused research program with the National Institutes of Health. In addition to these agency initiatives, Secretary Kennedy has been touring the country, often accompanied by USDA Secretary Rollins, to promote the adoption of MAHA policies on the state level. Typically at these events, the governor of the state where the Secretaries were visiting would sign some type of executive order or legislative action related to the MAHA priorities. For example, in June, Secretary Kennedy visited Oklahoma for the launch of the “Make Oklahoma Healthy Again” initiative. At this event, Governor Stitt signed a SNAP waiver request asking USDA to permit Oklahoma to ban SNAP participants from using their benefits to purchase soft drinks and candy. The governor also signed an executive order that, among other things, prohibited specific state agencies from supplying meals to the public that contain artificial dyes or flavors. Additionally, the Secretary also visited Louisiana where he joined the Governor as he signed SB 14, Louisiana’s “MAHA bill.”

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UPAlong with the national tour Secretary Kennedy is undertaking, a number of state legislatures took up the MAHA mantle this year and considered legislation in accordance with the MAHA priorities. Some states sought to ban artificial food dyes from being sold in the state, some sought to only ban the dyes from being present in school meals, some sought to prohibit the purchase of specific foods with SNAP benefits, some tried to define the term “ultra-processed foods,” and many tried to create nutrition related education initiatives. This article will specifically look at the Texas and Louisiana legislation but will mention proposals from other states. To learn more about food related laws passed in the states this year, click here to read NALC article “Food Law in the States – 2025 Update.”

Texas

On June 22, 2025, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed SB 25 into law. This legislation enacts a number of MAHA policies including required nutrition training for medical professionals, physical education mandates for students, creation of a Texas Nutrition Advisory Committee, and the adoption of labeling requirements for foods that contain certain ingredients.

Labeling rules

The most groundbreaking portion of SB 25 was its labeling requirements. SB 25 created a first in the nation labeling requirement that foods containing any of the bill’s 44 listed ingredients must bear a specific disclosure. This disclosure must say the following, “WARNING: This product contains an ingredient that is not recommended for human consumption by the appropriate authority in Australia, Canada, the European Union, or the United Kingdom.” The warning must be in a prominent and reasonably visible location and have “sufficiently high contrast with the immediate background” of the food product’s packaging. Additionally, food manufacturers or retailers that sell their products in the state of Texas must include the warning somewhere on their website. The list of 44 ingredients includes azodicarbonamide, bleached flour, propylparaben, interesterified soybean oil, any “certified food colors by the United States Food and Drug Administration,” and 39 listed others.

The bill clarifies that this labeling requirement does not apply to a product not intended for human consumption; food labeled, prepared, served, or sold in a restaurant; food labeled, prepared, or served in a retail establishment; a product regulated by the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service; a product labeled with a warning or recommendation by the U.S. Surgeon General; a drug or dietary supplement; or a pesticide chemical, soil or plant nutrient, or other agricultural chemical used in the production, storage, or transportation of a raw agricultural commodity. Additionally, the bill clarifies that this section does not create a private cause of action in the case of a violation of the rule, but that the Texas attorney general might bring an action to enjoin the food’s manufacturer if it is found to have violated the labeling requirement.

These rules are deemed preempted if, under federal law, the government post-September 1, 2025, prohibits the use of the specific ingredient, imposes conditions on the use of the ingredient, or determines the ingredient as safe for human consumption. Thus, under this provision, ingredients that have been approved as safe by the federal government prior to September 1, 2025, are required to bear the disclosure. However, if one of the listed ingredients is reviewed again and determined as safe after September 1, 2025, it would no longer be required to bear a warning label. Additionally, this labeling requirement is preempted and has no effect if, after the September 2025 date, the federal government implements a law or regulation that requires an ultra-processed or processed food-related labeling statement. The warning requirement only applies to food product labels “developed or copyrighted on or after January 1, 2027.”

Impacts of SB 25

It is noteworthy to mention a few things related to the impact of SB 25. The labeling requirement only impacts food for human consumption that is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. Thus, meat, poultry, catfish, and unshelled egg products regulated by the USDA will not be required to bear this label. Additionally, the provisions for requiring the disclosure on internet sales are noteworthy because they apply to both manufacturers and retailers who sell food items on their websites in the state of Texas. Therefore, online retailers who may not have a physical presence in Texas should be aware that if their website is accessible to Texas residents, it is required to comply with this rule and bear the warning statement.

However, the bill is narrower in scope than it may initially appear to be. Though the bill goes into effect on September 1, 2025, the labeling requirements will only be applied to food product labels which are developed or copyrighted on or after January 1, 2027. This means that any current food item containing any of the listed 44 ingredients will not be required to bear the warning label. Only new products or updated labels that are developed or copyrighted on or post-January 1, 2027 will require the warning. Lasty, the inclusion of language regarding preemption is notable because of the activity of the federal government on this topic. For example, Texas’ law states that if the federal government creates a rule that requires a warning label for “ultra-processed foods,” then the warning requirement created in SB 25 will have no effect. The topic of ultra-processed foods is one that the leadership at FDA has stated its intention of working on.

Louisiana

On June 20, 2025, Louisiana’s Governor Jeff Landry signed Senate Bill 14 into law. This bill included several food and nutrition related provisions. Specifically, the bill prohibits certain food ingredients from being served in schools, requires disclaimers on food items that contain certain ingredients, and mandates warnings to notify customers of seed oil use in food establishments. Additionally, this bill creates nutrition and metabolic health continuing education requirements for physicians, physician assistants, and registered nurses that practice in specific areas of medicine.

Prohibited ingredients

Under SB 14, Louisiana public schools and non-public schools that receive state funds shall not serve any food or beverage containing a prohibited ingredient to students. The bill identifies 15 “prohibited ingredients” including: blue dye 1, blue dye 2, green dye 3, red dye 3, red dye 40, yellow dye 5, yellow dye 6, azodicarbonamide, butylated hydroxytoluene, potassium bromate, aspartame, sucralose, propylparaben, butylated hydroxyanisole, and acesulfame potassium. This prohibition applies to breakfasts and lunches served during regular school hours and to foods and beverages served by the school to a student during aftercare. However, the prohibition does not extend to food or beverages sold in concession stands or vending machines. This section also includes a provision requiring public schools and non-public schools that receive state funds to purchase food produced in Louisiana to the extent practicable. These requirements become effective at the beginning of the 2028-2029 school year.

Disclosure of Harmful Ingredients

Similar to the Texas bill, Louisiana’s SB 14 creates labeling disclosures for food items that contain specific ingredients. Using a list similar to Texas, SB 14 requires that a food item with any of 44 listed ingredients is required to include a label with a quick response code (QR code), and a statement indicating that additional ingredient information can be accessed by scanning the code. The QR code will take the scanner to a web page that is under the control of the manufacturer and contains the following disclaimer “NOTICE: This product contains {ingredient}. For more information about the ingredient, including FDA approvals, click here.” This disclaimer will link to the FDA webpage that details food chemical safety. The law clarifies that the disclosure requirement only applies to food or beverages intended for human consumption. The bill further explains that the disclosure is not required on drugs or dietary supplements; alcoholic beverages; food prepared and labeled in a retail food establishment; medical food; nor a product sold at retail as a multiunit package.

Notice for Seed Oils

SB 14 also includes a provision that requires food service establishments to notify customers of food prepared using seed oils. Under Louisiana law, a food service establishment is one that prepares food for human consumption for both individual service or for a group of people, regardless of whether consumption occurs on or off the premises and whether there is compensation for the food or not. LA Rev Stat § 40:5.5. This definition includes not only restaurants, but also caterers, charities that service food, schools, and prisons. Specifically, the provision mandates a disclaimer be included on the menu or another clearly visible location to inform customers of the potential presence of seed oil in food at the establishment. The disclaimer must say, “Some menu items may contain or be prepared using seed oils.” Under the bill, a seed oil includes canola or rapeseed oil, corn oil, cottonseed oil, grapeseed oil, rice bran oil, safflower oil, soybean oil, or sunflower oil. This provision, along with the provision requiring ingredient disclosure, will become effective on January 1, 2028.

Impact of SB 14

Though the labeling requirements created in Texas and Louisiana’s bills include similar components, Louisiana’s impact is much more straightforward. While SB 14 will be preempted if a federal statute, regulation, or guidance is enacted that is equivalent to or more restrictive than the requirements of the bill, it does not include the narrow conditions for preemption that Texas does, nor does it include a “grandfather clause” for pre-existing labels. Instead, the labeling requirements are simply set to go into effect on January 1, 2028, and will apply to “any food product offered for sale in this state . . . if the product contains any ingredient identified.” This means that by the start of 2028, any product containing any of the listed ingredients must bear the disclosure on its packaging. Further the manufacturer of the product must create and maintain webpages on its website for the QR code to link to.

Other state enactments

As mentioned before, Texas and Louisiana are just the latest two states to enact legislation pertaining to the “MAHA” priorities. For example, earlier this year, similar to one portion of the Louisiana bill, West Virginia, Virginia, Arizona, Delaware, Tennessee, and Utah passed legislation banning foods with certain ingredients from being served in school meals. Texas also passed a separate bill that did the same thing. Additionally, West Virginia’s bill included a general additive ban – prohibiting the sale generally in the state of foods containing specific ingredients. Though not all states passing and considering this legislation are doing so under the “MAHA mantle.” For example, before “MAHA” existed, California was the first state to enact legislation to prohibit the sale and ban from school meals foods that contain certain food additives. To read more about those laws, click here and here. Now, California is considering legislation that would give the first statutory definition to the term “ultra-processed foods.” AB 1264 has passed California’s Assembly and is currently being considered by lawmakers in California’s Senate.

A version of this article was originally posted at The National Agriculture Law Center and has been reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit the original author and provide links to both the GLP and the original article. Find Unbiased Science on X @nataglaw

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Some ideas are repeated so often, we start believing they’re true – particularly when it comes to food. But there’s a lot of culinary misinformation out there that could potentially spoil your supper. Want to separate the myths from the facts? To set the record straight, we’ve debunked some of the most common foodie misconceptions.

1. Strawberries are berries

… Botanists officially classify strawberries as aggregate fruit because they come from a flower with more than one ovary. The same goes for raspberries. However, pomegranates, kiwis and bananas are berries

1. The five-second rule is a thing

2. Canned food is less nutritious

3. Spinach is the ultimate iron powerhouse

4. Your ‘five a day’ is based on hard science

5. Broccoli contains more protein than steak

6. Keeping the pit in an avocado will prevent it from browning

7. If a soup is too salty, you should add a peeled raw potato

8. Subway uses fake chicken and tuna

9. Beaver secretions are used in all artificial vanilla products

10. The longer you marinate meat, the better

11. American cheese was invented in the USA

12. You shouldn’t cook tomatoes in a cast-iron pan

13. You should always sift your flour for baking

14. Turkey makes you sleepy

15. Fast food fries are vegan

16. Drinking milk prevents bone fractures

17. You shouldn’t cook with extra-virgin olive oil

18. You shouldn’t crowd mushrooms in a pan

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UP18. You shouldn’t wash mushrooms

1. Oranges are the fruit with the most vitamin C

2. Raw vegetables are healthier than cooked vegetables

3. KFC uses genetically engineered chickens

… In fact, KFC once sued three Chinese companies for spreading misinformation ….

1. The seeds are the spiciest part of a chilli pepper

2. Eating celery burns more calories than you gain

3. You should wait half an hour after eating before swimming

4. If you swallow gum, it’ll stay in your stomach for seven years

5. You should wash your chicken

This one is a real no-no. Washing raw chicken is completely unnecessary, as any bacteria it contains will be destroyed when the chicken is cooked. Furthermore, studies have shown that washing your chicken increases the chances of spreading bacteria ….

1. McDonald’s food never spoils

2. Searing meat keeps the juices in

3. MSG is bad for you

4. Eating carrots improves your eyesight

5. Sharp knives are more likely to cause an injury

6. You should drink eight glasses of water a day

7. Chocolate gives you spots

8. Adding oil to pasta water prevents it from sticking

9. Sugar makes kids hyperactive

[T]he idea that sugar causes hyperactivity was disproven years ago. In a study conducted in the 1990s, mothers who were told their children had been given a large dose of sugar rated them as significantly more hyperactive – though the kids had only been given a placebo.

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here

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The message is unmistakable: Global warming is coming for your family’s dinner table, and only sweeping climate policy can save it. The message is also wrong. …

Start with coffee, supposedly on its deathbed. This year, global coffee production is expected to set yet another record — more than double the world’s output of 50 years ago. Crops on the brink of extinction don’t deliver record harvests. …

How do outlets like the New York Times get it so wrong? By inexcusably ignoring inflation — comparing coffee prices from the 1970s, expressed in the dollars of that day, with prices expressed in today’s dollars. By that standard, everything is at a record high, always.

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UPEven Nature’s own reporting on coffee undercuts its ominous headline detailing “how scientists are fighting to save it from extinction.” Ethiopia keeps more than 12,000 arabica plants in living gene banks for breeding heat- and drought-tolerant varieties.

“I believe we have enough gene pool to fight climate change,” Kassahun Tesfaye, the Ethiopian plant geneticist leading the effort, says. … That isn’t extinction. It is what agriculture has always been: adaptation and improvement.

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Ten years ago, when I started writing SlimeGate, many in the activist NGO world felt uncomfortable about getting into bed with these slimeball tort lawyers. While the “enemy of my enemy may be my friend”, some activists were having misgivings about cooperating with a faction of the legal profession that would use NGOs to help them extort companies, not for justice for plaintiffs, but for massive wealth accumulation, private jets and personal excess. How far were these idealists willing to look the other way in order to score a victory against industry, raise funding and enforce positive change for the environment? In the last decade, the answer became clear: Very far!

I have watched the evolution in the activist-Predatort nexus, particularly during the glyphosate saga.

• Early on, groups like Corporate Europe Observatory were using activist scientists like Chris Portier to write reports for them on the risks of glyphosate, knowing full well his services were paid for by the law firms suing then Monsanto and later Bayer.
• Then NGOs like Friends of the Earth started coordinating their glyphosate lobbying efforts with key beneficiary law firms like Wisner Baum.
• It didn’t take too long after for the US litigation industry to start paying off NGOs, reporters and filmmakers to do their bidding, via non-transparent donor-advised funds, as in the funding behind the Into the Weeds campaign.
• Funding activist scientists like Philip Landrigan and Chuck Benbrook to produce court-ready evidence was seen in the financial malfeasance of the Heartland Health Research Alliance, a non-profit set up by the US litigation industry to channel millions into fabricating research to be used in NGO campaigns and further lawsuits.

At this point no one in the civil society movement had any qualms about receiving Predatort millions via foundations functioning as pass-throughs. The passion for the planet was taken over by the passion to win, and these modern-day Machiavellians were wickedly efficient. The money was too good for any ethical introspection and without transparency or public scrutiny, activists found they could say and do whatever they liked.

But if it had only stopped there…

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UPStrategic LitigationTwo years ago, the deepest moral decline of the environmental activist profession was put in evidence, and next week we will be witnessing the instigators boasting about it. The Lighthouse Reports affair showed law firms working directly with journalists, NGOs and foundations to put one of their political adversaries out of business in the hopes of advancing a lawsuit on paraquat. This is an example of strategic litigation, and one of the perpetrators is presenting it as a case study at a webinar next week to train other activists.

Strategic litigation (also called “impact litigation”) is the weaponization of the litigation industry to effect change on industries, governments and public perceptions. Born from a La Jolla conference in 2012, the brainchild of Naomi Oreskes’ tormented mind, the strategy was to circumvent the regulatory process (seen as poisoned by lobbyists) with their alternative, later referred to as adversarial regulation. This approach was built around a litigation-led campaign attacking a targeted industry or product. The goal is to use relentless lawfare assaults to effectively tobacconize other industries, destroying their reputation, market and business model (suing them out of business or into submission). There was no need to engage in the messy (albeit democratic) business of regulatory change. Some people call this extortion; Naomi referred to it as “progress” (and personally lucrative).

Fourteen years after La Jolla, it is no longer a convenient coincidence when activists, foundations and law firms have the same goals. Now these campaigns are coordinated with clear strategies and gameplans from the outset. Imagine an activist consultant working for a foundation (or developing a dark fiscal sponsorship organization from a group of foundations), coordinating a multi-pronged attack on a company or regulatory body via a group of NGOs and law firms.

The collusion can take many forms.

Dark subterfugeThese campaigns would usually go under the radar as none of these groups feel the need to be transparent or accountable. Consultants who have worked their way onto foundation boards can act like generals stealthly commanding a flotilla of NGOs. A good example was when the provincial government in Alberta, Canada had to conduct an inquiry with a forensic accounting expert to learn how far these dark forces had gone to obstruct economic affairs in the province (NGOs spent at least 1.28 billion CAD in foundation funding that had “lost its character”). The media, mostly funded by these same foundations, ignored the government’s findings.

Fiscal sponsorsThe fiscal sponsor may create its own NGO-like organization to spearhead the campaign (ensuring that the campaign group is not filed as a legal entity to avoid transparency and accountability requirements). The law firms will share their network of scientists, serving as highly-paid litigation consultants, to publish papers to raise doubt about the issue at hand. This was Glyphosate 101. These papers as well as the overall campaign are then amplified by foundation-funded media groups and investigative reporters.

Dark, donor-advised fundsDepending on the potential for payouts, law firms may fund the campaign via dark donor-advised foundation funds (as in the Heartland Health Research Alliance) or the foundations may fund multiple dead-end lawfare assaults on targeted industries, not to win but to merely extract reputational damage to feed into a larger campaign (as seen with Sher Edling or Earthjustice).

Global, transnational reachAs an added touch, this unholy alliance can foster its influence (scientists or foundation funding) into UN bodies to drive another regulatory angle (seen with IARC, the FAO, UNEP and the WHO). The UN conference mill is now captured by the foundations, activist scientists, NGOs and specialty media groups.

Strategic litigation has delivered dividends for a wide range of activist campaigns like those against glyphosate, plastics and microplastics, fossil fuels, salmon farming but the playbook is rarely openly discussed by its perpetrators. That is why next week’s webinar on Strategic Litigation will be interesting.

The Lighthouse Laser BeamThe Lighthouse Reports’ Poison PR investigation is a case study of the backhanded dealings of the NGO, media and foundation special interests covertly working with the US litigation industry in a coordinated assault on a small communications firm. It was driven by law firms attempting to create public outrage of corporate malfeasance as they launched a large number of paraquat lawsuits.

This jury priming tactic (creating anti-industry outrage) was used successfully with the release and promotion of the Monsanto Papers during the glyphosate lawsuits and attempted with Oreskes’ Exxon Knew campaign to link the fossil fuel industry with the consequences of climate change. But this story has an ethical taint that makes the perpetration of the Poison PR campaign even more repugnant.

The Lighthouse-Predatort alliance started when a group of US tort law firms, including the Miller Firm, obtained a series of documents in discovery from Syngenta related to their paraquat activities. They leaked the confidential documents to the Environmental Working Group activist and self-proclaimed “journalist”, Carey Gillam, who claimed she woke up one morning and discovered 10,000 files in boxes outside of her front door.

The Miller Firm has had a longstanding relationship with Gillam, using her to amplify the release of the Monsanto Papers during the bellwether glyphosate case, to which both parties profited handsomely. She also orchestrated a character assassination of Tim Litzenburg when he was challenging their glyphosate evidence (as not actually the main cause of the plaintiff’s cancers) so she has proven to be very efficient at hiding the knives. Gillam promptly published the leaked documents on the EWG website, calling them the “Paraquat Papers” (evidence enough that Carey had exhausted any remaining creative inspiration).

The documents themselves had limited value for the class action suits being gathered against Syngenta, but they revealed a relationship between the company and a small communications firm, v-Fluence. The firm, with 28 employees, was known for its daily Bonus Eventus newsletters that documented activist strategies and campaign events, offering ag-tech and food industry actors a window on their tactics and advice on how to manage the issues.

The story from the leaked documents was not about paraquat (the evidence of a link to Parkinson’s was very weak) nor about Syngenta (who had followed their ethical codes of conduct), but instead focused on how v-Fluence had been internally sharing some of the negative published media about activists, including Ms Gillam.

Gillam took the confidential discovery documents to Lighthouse Reports, a Dutch non-profit mercenary group producing investigative reports at the behest of any special interests that would fund the NGO’s publications. (They call it “collaborative journalism”.) In other words, Lighthouse Reports is another one of those “Reporters for Hire” groups feeding off of foundation funding to publish bespoke investigative journalism attack pieces. For their Poison PR investigation, they assembled a group of reporters from across the globe (essentially eight freelance journalists who had been sharing each others’ anti-industry hit-pieces).

Lighthouse secured funding from the Oak Foundation for this campaign, totalling at least €800,000. Oak has a clear strategy of funding campaigns against industry, promoting agroecology and attacking conventional agricultural practices. The foundation also provides a dark donor-advised funding mechanism (a funding pass-through) so we really cannot say which special interests were behind this report. Needless to say, Lighthouse Reports activists were drunk with cash as both Carey Gillam and Margo Gibbs (based in Amsterdam) had offered to fly to St Louis to personally interview the v-Fluence managing director (see mail below). They even hacked into the closed Bonus Eventus website.

Drunk with unlimited foundation funding and no accountability. Also, Carey Gillam is not employed by the Guardian but she never corrected this claim.The Lighthouse Reports investigation into this small communications firm was merely the first step in this strategic litigation exercise. Law firms from the US and Europe then started to file lawsuits against v-Fluence, demanding disclosure of all correspondence and documents. Cases were then filed against their clients, ensuring an exodus that would bankrupt the firm. The efficiency of these relentless attacks on a small firm like v-Fluence was brutal, vicious and vindictive.

Meanwhile, the network of journalists amplified the investigation for several months, hoping to snowball the claims against this small organization into a mass global outrage event as the paraquat bellwether lawsuits were being heard in the US. Domiciled in Brussels, I was on Le Monde activist, Stéphane Content’s dance card (but I ignored his correspondence as he had broken at least eight of Le Monde’s ten ethical codes of conduct).

Celebrating FailureThis was definitely not a Monsanto Papers success story. The Lighthouse Report investigation did not reveal any large exposé of corporate corruption. They spent a lot of money and made a lot of noise, but the then ongoing paraquat bellwether cases were thrown out on the basis of bad science. The judge not only dismissed the poor research, she referred to how the litigation consultant “required several methodological contortions and outright violations of the scientific standards he professed to apply”.

Unlike glyphosate, the law firms could not use outrage as a substitute for scientific evidence. The only thing the law firms, working in tandem with the reporters, activists and foundations, had achieved was bankrupting a small communications company (and a reminder, if we needed one, of how weak and cowardly industry trade associations like CropLife America have become).

Despite its failure and evidence of a tired gameplan, the Lighthouse Reports’ tactics show the dark underbelly of activist collusion with the litigation industry. See my critical analysis of the Lighthouse Reports investigation here. There was no transparency (essential for reporters) but rather a concerted effort by law firms, foundations and the journalists to hide their sources, funding and evidence. They hacked, lied and cheated to get their story out.

But their story was a nothing burger.

The intention of creating another ExxonKnew or Monsanto Papers campaign to cultivate jury outrage to augment court payouts and increase the chance of settlements (extortion) in tens of thousands of paraquat lawsuits were weak when the only case they had was a communications firm that was sharing published documents of activist tactics. If vengeance is a measure for success, then Carey should be proud.

Strategic litigation is one more weapon in the activist arsenal to spread distrust, outrage and disinformation against industry. When law firms hire activist zealots to do their dirty work, they are getting value for money. When NGOs get in bed with these slimeball Predatorts, they surrender all integrity and self-respect. It is a toxic activist tool that should only be exercised out of desperation. But now NGOs and foundations seem to use it as their main campaign strategy.

[On July 28, 20226], one of the authors of the Lighthouse Reports Poison PR publication, Thin Lei Win, will proudly present this case study at a webinar on strategic litigation. I’m looking forward to learning how she sleeps at night.

You can register for the strategic litigation webinar here.

David Zaruk is the Firebreak editor, and also writes under the pen-name The Risk Monger. David is a retired professor, environmental-health risk analyst, science communicator, promoter of evidence-based policy and philosophical theorist on activists and the media. Find David on X @Zaruk

A version of this article was originally posted at Firebreak and has been reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit the original author and provide links to both the GLP and the original article. Find Firebreak on X @the_firebreak

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Even credentialed scientists are susceptible to the pressures of social media virality, sometimes venturing well beyond their expertise to promote popular but misleading health narratives. Last week, Dr. Rhonda Patrick of FoundMyFitness, typically a reliable source of science-backed info on nutrition, urged the public to switch to organic food to cut their pesticide exposure. With over 1.4 million followers, Patrick’s message amplified a widespread fear but ignored critical scientific context.

The simple, oft-overlooked truth is that pesticide residues in both conventional and organic foods occur at trace levels that regulatory science deems safe. Maximum residue limits (MRLs) and allowable daily intakes (ADIs) incorporate large safety factors—often 10- to 1,000-fold—below doses showing no adverse effects in rigorous toxicology testing. Consumers quite literally can’t ingest enough produce to approach these strict thresholds.

Organic production also uses pesticides, including some with higher toxicity profiles than their modern synthetic counterparts—which also help prevent far more dangerous natural contaminants like aflatoxin-producing molds, a major global cause of liver cancer.

Like many influencers before her, Patrick relied on observational studies and high-dose animal experiments to bolster her advice. These papers are frequently cited in anti-pesticide discussions, though they bear little relevance to typical dietary exposures. Likewise, detection of pesticide metabolites in urine reflects normal liver and kidney function, not toxicity.

Even among professional applicators exposed at much higher levels under strict protocols and personal protective equipment, cancer rates are often lower than the public’s very low risk—likely due to healthier lifestyles and greater fruit and vegetable consumption.

The problem with Patrick’s well-meaning but misinformed messaging is that it risks discouraging intake of nutritious produce, an actual public health priority. While organic food serves as a valid personal or local choice for those who prefer it, the evidence does not demonstrate meaningful safety advantages against conventionally grown food.

Modern agricultural tools enable abundant, affordable food supplies that have dramatically improved food security compared to historical organic practices. That’s a critical message more people need to hear.

Join Dr. Liza Lockwood and Cam English on this episode of Facts & Fallacies as they take on a pesticide myth even some scientists fall for:

Dr. Liza Lockwood is a medical toxicologist and the medical affairs lead at Bayer Crop Science. Follow her on X @DrLizaMD

Cameron J. English is the executive vice president at the American Council on Science and Health. Follow him on X @camjenglish

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Calories alone are not enoughClimate change is not only affecting how much food we can produce, but also how nutritious that food is. In a review published in the leading scientific journal Nature, researchers from Ghent University and international partners explore how genetic technologies can help develop crops that are both more nutritious and better able to cope with climate-related stress.

More than two billion people worldwide do not get enough essential vitamins and minerals. This problem, known as hidden hunger, means that people consume enough calories but still lack the nutrients needed for a healthy life.

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UPFor billions of people, staple crops such as rice, wheat, maize, potatoes and cassava form the basis of their daily diet. While these crops provide energy, they often contain too few vitamins and minerals to prevent nutritional deficiencies. At the same time, a growing body of research shows that climate change is reducing the nutritional value of several major food crops.

Meeting three challenges at onceIn the Nature review, Professor Dominique Van Der Straeten (Ghent University) and international experts examine how science can help develop crops that are richer in essential nutrients while also becoming more resilient to drought, heat, salinity and other climate-related stresses. Emeritus Professor Marc Van Montagu, a pioneer in plant biotechnology, is a co-author of the study.

The researchers argue that the agriculture of the future must address three major challenges simultaneously: producing enough food, improving its nutritional quality and increasing crops’ resilience to a changing climate.

“Future crops must combine higher yields with better nutritional quality and greater resilience to drought, heat and other consequences of climate change,” says Professor Dominique Van Der Straeten.

Combining technologies for greater impactThe review discusses how new genetic technologies, including CRISPR-based genome editing, can contribute to crops with higher levels of vitamins and minerals. These technologies allow researchers to make precise changes to plant characteristics that are important for nutritional quality.

The authors stress, however, that there is no single solution. While these technologies can play an important role in tackling malnutrition, conventional breeding and other biotechnological approaches will remain equally important.

According to the researchers, the greatest progress will come from combining different scientific approaches, tailored to individual crops and local growing conditions.

Decades of Ghent University expertiseThe publication builds on many years of research at Ghent University into improving the nutritional quality of crops. Ghent University has long been recognised internationally as a pioneer in research on vitamin enrichment of food crops.

The authors hope their review will draw attention to an often-overlooked aspect of food security. As the world’s population continues to grow and the climate changes, ensuring that food provides not only enough calories but also the nutrients needed for good health is becoming increasingly important.

A version of this article was originally posted at Ghent University. Any reposting should credit the original author and provide links to both the GLP and the original article. Find Ghent University on X @ugent

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The scientific evidence increasingly refutes the alarmist narrative that our farmland bird and insect populations are disappearing due to intensive agriculture. In fact, total bird and insect numbers in Britain have been stable for the past 30 years. Freshwater insects are thriving. Many of the NGOs behind these misleading claims of ecological collapse have built their campaigns, and their fundraising strategies, on such fear-mongering. In doing so they risk undermining the very causes they claim to represent, argue Peter Button, Daniel Pearsall and Matt Ridley.[Science] for Sustainable Agriculture reiterated its call for an urgent review of the ‘limited and highly selective’ list of indicator species used by the UK Government to determine and report the status of bird life on British farmland.It followed the publication of a new report from the UK environment department, Defra, entitled Wild bird populations in the UK and England, 1970 to 2024, which suggests that Britain’s farmland bird numbers declined sharply during the 1970s and 1980s, and that while the rate of decline has since slowed, “populations have continued to decline at a fast rate, declining by 11% in the five years since 2019.”

Predictably, the Defra report was greeted by media headlines claiming that Britain’s farmland bird populations have plummeted by more than 60% since 1970, and reinforcing a popular narrative that modern intensive agriculture is driving an ecological crisis in our wildlife.

It also prompted calls from RSPB, one of the principal authors of the Defra report, for more taxpayers’ money to be channelled into ‘nature-friendly farming’.

Yet a closer look at the evidence reveals a very different picture. The government’s biodiversity assessments are based on a narrow and outdated list of just 19 bird species – a snapshot frozen in time over half a century ago.

The farmland bird index no longer reflects the species diversity found on Britain’s farmland, and excludes important species such as the carrion crow and chaffinch, increasingly important farmland birds such as the herring and lesser black-backed gulls, as well as thriving birds of prey like the red kite and buzzard.

By contrast, more comprehensive datasets, covering dozens of farmland-associated species, reveal that overall bird populations have largely remained stable, even showing modest increases over recent decades.

This discrepancy matters. Not only does it call into question the reliability of official biodiversity indicators, but it also exposes the undue influence of environmental NGOs in shaping how such data are presented.

Many of these organisations have built their campaigns, and indeed their fundraising strategies, on alarmist claims that biodiversity is collapsing under the weight of intensive farming. While such rhetoric may generate headlines and donations, it risks distorting genuine conservation priorities.

Biodiversity is not static; species rise and fall in response to multiple factors including predation, disease, climate change, and competition. Focusing narrowly on productive agriculture as the main culprit ignores these complexities — and potentially diverts attention from more pressing challenges where conservation efforts could make a real difference.

Exactly the same scenario is playing out in relation to Britain’s insect populations, which we are frequently warned are in freefall and at risk of an insect ‘apocalypse’.

[A] grouping of UK environmental NGOs issued ‘The Bristol Declaration’, warning of an ‘insect declines crisis’, and calling for action in response to the ‘alarming and ongoing decline of the United Kingdom’s insect populations.’According to the declaration, the causes of these declines are ‘well-evidenced’, and include ‘pesticide and chemical use’ and ‘intensive agriculture’ alongside other factors such as habitat loss and climate change.

Very timely, then, that this should follow the publication in the journal Nature Communications of peer-reviewed research into the status of Britain’s insect populations which, virtually mirroring the more comprehensive wild bird data, concludes that while there have been changes in insect species diversity and distribution over the past three decades, there has been ‘no Great Britain-wide decline since 1990.’

The paper, led by scientists at Rothamsted Research but also involving representatives of some of the NGOs behind The Bristol Declaration, reveals a complex picture. While overall insect numbers have been stable since 1990, localised shifts and community restructuring are widespread, driven largely by urbanisation, landscape simplification, and climate change.

The paper suggests that this more nuanced understanding of the changes taking place in Britain’s insect populations is at odds with the pervasive narrative of general insect collapse. The authors emphasise the importance of local context and species-specific responses.

Using machine-learning models to examine more than 1200 insect species across nine major groups – ranging from butterflies and moths to bees and hoverflies – the scientists tracked the changes in distribution and identified the traits that mediate these responses.

Notably, two traits emerged as particularly influential: habitat breadth, which determines how species respond to changing landscape diversity; and voltinism – or the number of generations produced in a year – which influences how insects adapt to rising temperatures and altered seasonal cycles.

The study’s findings challenge the simplistic notion that all insects are uniformly declining. One of its most critical insights is the interplay between species traits and environmental drivers. By understanding how traits like voltinism and habitat breadth mediate responses to environmental changes, conservationist scientists can better predict which species are likely to thrive and which are vulnerable, with significant implications for the development of more evidence-based conservation and land use policies.

Above all, the study directly contradicts and confronts the NGO-led narrative that our insect populations are disappearing at an alarming rate, or that a move away from high-yield agriculture would be beneficial to insect numbers.

In fact, by requiring more land to meet our food needs, a greater emphasis on lower-yielding, so-called ‘nature-friendly’ farming may actually make things worse.

Nor is this Nature Communications paper alone in challenging claims of an ‘insect decline crisis’ in the UK.

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UPAnother comprehensive study led by researchers at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) and published in December 2023, found that freshwater invertebrate biodiversity in England has improved significantly since 1989.

In one of the largest and most wide-ranging analyses of long-term monitoring data in the world – spanning over 30 years – the researchers analysed more than 223,000 freshwater records collected by the Environment Agency between 1989 and 2018, examining species such as dragonflies, snails, mayflies, shrimp and worms. On average, the number of invertebrate families at each site showed a 66% increase. Pollution-sensitive species like mayflies, stoneflies and caddisflies saw particularly strong recoveries, with diversity increasing by 300%.

The improvements in the study were observed across all river types and regions, from urban lowlands to rural uplands, and the researchers concluded that water quality improvements have been the key driver in reversing biodiversity decline.

So, the scientific evidence indicates that prospects for our freshwater insects, singled out for concern by NGOs in The Bristol Declaration, are getting better, not worse.

Policymakers and the mainstream media must take heed.

If policy decisions and public opinion are guided by selective evidence and fear-driven NGO narratives, the danger is not just misinformation but the misallocation of scarce resources needed for nature protection.

The competing demands on our finite land resources are ever-intensifying. By promoting a lower-yielding, land-sharing approach to farm policy, while at the same time demonising intensive agriculture and campaigning against new technologies such as genome editing which hold such promise to reduce farming’s environmental footprint, these NGOs are working against the conservation and biodiversity causes they claim to represent.

Of course, an arable field contains fewer insects than an equivalent area of scrubland or forest because it contains fewer plant species by definition. But that’s not the comparison that matters. What counts is whether ten acres of lower yielding farmland has more or fewer insects and birds than eight acres of high yielding land plus two of “spared land” if they produce the same tonnage of harvested crop.

The scientific evidence increasingly points to land-sparing – focusing high-yield agriculture on our most fertile land and leaving more land for intact nature and biodiversity conservation – as the most efficient, cost-effective and sustainable way to meet our food needs, achieve conservation goals and mitigate climate change. Releasing more land for nature is also likely to make it more accessible for public enjoyment of the countryside – a win-win-win for food security, biodiversity and the public good!

Peter Button recently retired as Vice Secretary-General at the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), based in Geneva, an intergovernmental organisation whose mission is to provide and promote an effective system of plant variety protection, with the aim of encouraging the development of new varieties of plants for the benefit of society. Find Peter on X @PeterJohnButton

Daniel Pearsall is an independent consultant specialising in communication and policy development in the farming, food chain and agri-science sectors. He runs a small livestock farm in Scotland. He co-ordinates the Science for Sustainable Agriculture initiative. Find Daniel on X @PearsallDaniel

Matt Ridley is a science writer and co-author of Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19, with Alina Chan. He has been a journalist and a businessman and served for nine years in the House of Lords.Find Matt on X @mattwridley

A version of this article was originally posted at Science for Sustainable Agriculture and is reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit both the GLP and original article. Find them on X @SciSustAg

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[1.] Many people think genetically modified fruit is a recent invention, but the first GMO fruit hit the market in the 1990s. 2. Despite the hype, most of the fruit in your grocery store isn’t genetically modified.

1. A major misconception about GMO fruit is that it’s drenched in pesticides—but that’s not always true.

2. Studies show that GMO fruits are just as safe as their non-GMO counterparts.

3. One of the most well-known GMO fruits is the Arctic apple, which was modified to resist browning when sliced. It doesn’t mean it’s fake—it simply has a gene turned off that slows oxidation.

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UP6. Every fruit you eat today—GMO or not—has been genetically altered through selective breeding over thousands of years.

1. For many developing countries, genetically modified crops have been a lifeline.

2. As of 2022, the U.S. Department of Agriculture requires all genetically modified foods to be labeled under the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard.

3. GMO technology has the potential to transform both farming and global health.

4. At the heart of the GMO conversation isn’t just biology—it’s belief.

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here

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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a reputation for bashing powerful corporate interests in his quest to “Make America Healthy Again.” But one industry has eked out a win under Kennedy’s MAHA agenda: Big Agriculture.

In May, the Trump administration’s MAHA commission released a report raising questions about the health effects of two commonly used pesticides, glyphosate and atrazine. …

Major trade groups scrambled to meet with White House officials. They urged the commission in a coordinated social media campaign to take a “fact-based approach,” and sent letters to key federal departments.

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UPTheir efforts seemingly paid off. The Trump administration’s MAHA strategy document … did not call for restrictions on pesticides and instead said the EPA would work to ensure the public is aware of its “robust” review procedures, a marked shift from Kennedy’s past criticism of chemicals as contaminating the nation’s food supply.

…

The scientific and regulatory consensus on the safety of glyphosate is divided. … Bayer, which has faced a blitz of lawsuits over its glyphosate-containing herbicide, has stood by the chemical’s safety.

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Today, the creed lighting up meetings, conference stages and supermarket shelves is regenerative agriculture (RA).

…

It has become less about agronomy and more about allegory – a story people want to believe, a sermon sprinkled with slogans, attracting investors, consultants and opportunists as eagerly as earthworms to compost.

And in Malaysia, where oil palm remains the country’s most important crop, the gap between regenerative rhetoric and estate reality could not be wider.

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UPThe truth is that oil palm’s most pressing problem is not the absence of regenerative practices but the long stagnant and recent declining yields.

Annual palm oil yields in Malaysia sit at around 3.5 tonnes per hectare, barely half the six to eight tonnes achieved in good plantation plots.

…

It is, then, a tale of two regenerations. On one side is the ideological kind: vague labels, carbon credits, consumer halos and PowerPoint promises.

On the other is the agronomic kind: the gritty, often thankless work of site-specific diagnosis, better planting materials, timely and adequate fertilisation, mechanisation and evidence-based research and development.

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Rice is perhaps the world’s most important foodstuff — it feeds more than half the global population. But it is also one of the most climate-damaging crops.

Rice is usually grown in waterlogged paddy fields, which creates oxygen-starved soils that release methane — a greenhouse gas that is far more potent than carbon dioxide.

Techniques and technologies exist to change this, if farmers and governments can work together.

…

Methane from rice comes largely from the way it is grown — flooding paddy fields cuts off oxygen from the soil, creating the anaerobic conditions in which microbes thrive and release methane. The longer a field is submerged, the more methane builds up.

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UPOne technique, alternate wetting and drying, tries to break that cycle. The water level is allowed to drop 15cm below ground level before it is topped up, measured using a perforated tube inserted into the field. Allowing the soil to dry periodically reintroduces oxygen, disrupting the methane-producing microbes. This can reduce water use by about a third and lower methane emissions by 30-70 per cent without significant losses in the rice yielded ….

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For years, Kenyan farmers have been complaining of expensive and poor quality livestock feed that is eating into their profits.

They say the feed weakens livestock, reducing milk production from animals.

The Association of Kenya Feeds Manufacturers (Akefema) said the low supply of raw materials have contributed to the high cost of feed.

…

Prices of maize and soybeans, key feed ingredients, have been rising over the years and increased by 30 per cent just last year alone.

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UPChairperson Joseph Karuri said the challenges are worsened by erratic weather patterns in different parts of the country.

“The result of all these challenges is unaffordable feed and loss of livelihoods that have affected the national food security,” he said.

…

He said most food secure countries that have a competitive livestock sector have embrace GMO maize and soya bean meals in production of feed.

…

But locally, production of GMOs has been affected by misinformation.

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The future of the avocado could look very different, thanks to Westfalia Fruit’s innovative precision breeding programme in South Africa.

At its research and development hub in Tzaneen, the global avocado company has planted more than 140 avocado varieties from around the world in a dedicated orchard, with up to three trees of each cultivar. This ‘genetic library’ is a cornerstone of Westfalia’s ambitious “Orchard of the Future” – a 50-hectare site where researchers are breeding the avocado varieties of tomorrow.

…

By pairing traditional cross-pollination with tools such as DNA markers and AI-driven analysis, Westfalia is fast-tracking a process that once took decades. The focus is on selecting superior traits, from improved flavour and texture to larger fruit size and resistance to pests and disease.

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UP“We might one day create novel types such as those with vibrant skin colours, unique and distinctive flavours, very large sized varieties; the possibilities are almost endless, creating choice for customers and consumers,” said Matthew Churchill, Global Brand Manager at Westfalia Fruit.

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A new review paper by researchers at Bayer Crop Science, titled Beautiful and delicious mutants: The origins, fates, and benefits of molecular sequence variation in plant evolution and breeding, explains how genetic mutations in plants are not just accidents of nature – they are the foundation of agriculture itself.Published in the scientific journal Plant Physiology, the paper argues that plant mutations — whether spontaneous or engineered — are at the heart of food security and agricultural innovation.

From chance to choice

For most of human history, crop genetic improvement has relied on luck. A farmer might notice a barley plant with larger seeds or a tomato with fewer cracks and save those seeds for the next season. Without realising it, they were harnessing mutations — random DNA changes that happened to produce useful traits.

Each generation of plant has natural mutations in its DNA which help to drive the processes of evolution and natural selection. Some of these changes will make the plant more or less successful in its environment, but humans have been able to harness this to benefit the development of agriculture. Over thousands of years, this slow process of selection and human intervention helped transform bitter wild almonds into sweet ones, sprawling teosinte grasses into compact, high-yielding maize plants, and tough wild apples into crisp dessert varieties.

But chance alone could only take us so far – it is slow and unpredictable. In the mid-20th century, scientists began deliberately inducing mutations with radiation and chemicals, hoping to accelerate the discovery of beneficial traits. This “mutation breeding” produced thousands of new crop varieties, from malting barley and high-yielding rice to colourful chrysanthemums. These ‘mutant’ varieties remain staples in our diets and gardens today.

In the Bayer paper, the authors emphasise that these older methods of inducing mutations are not fundamentally different from natural ones — the DNA changes are physically indistinguishable. The only difference is whether they occurred by chance or by human design.

Genome editing: evolution with a scalpel

The most recent chapter in this evolving story is genome editing. Tools like CRISPR allow scientists to introduce mutations at specific locations in a plant’s genome, rather than waiting for chance or using radiation. Imagine being able to edit an almond so that only its kernels lose bitterness, while its roots still produce natural protective compounds against insects. Or designing rice that can thrive in salty soils without sacrificing yield.

The paper argues that genome editing is, in many ways, just a more precise continuation of what farmers and breeders have always done: generating genetic diversity and then selecting useful traits. But unlike earlier methods, genome editing is much more precise – which saves time and reduces wasted effort by improving the chances of success in modern plant breeding programmes.

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UPThe beauty of variation

One of the most compelling aspects of the paper is the way it reframes the mutations delivered by plant breeders over the years as sources of beauty and diversity. Consider:

• Polyploidy — the doubling (or even tripling) of entire genomes — has given us plump seedless watermelons, modern octoploid strawberries which stem from natural 18th century hybridisation, and the fluffy ornamental cockscomb flower. Though technically “errors” in cell division, these mutations are agricultural treasures;
• Structural changes like inversions or translocations have shaped crop qualities ranging from the colour of wine grapes to disease resistance in wheat;
• Tiny DNA changes can have massive consequences: a single base-pair swap made almonds safe to eat, while another created carrots rich in vitamin A.

Even transposable elements — so-called “jumping genes” once dismissed as genomic parasites — have sparked major agricultural shifts, including the transformation of maize from a many-branched wild grass into the single-stalk architecture found in modern cornfields, whose global production today exceeds 1 billion tonnes.

These stories remind us that our food system is built on centuries of accumulated mutations, selected and refined by both natural forces and human intervention.

The perception problem

But if mutations are so central to agriculture, why do they carry such a negative reputation? The paper notes that in popular culture, “mutants” are usually monsters, and in medicine, mutations are often linked to cancer or genetic disorders. Rarely do we hear about mutations as the reason we enjoy juicy peaches or seedless bananas.

This perception gap matters. Genome editing, despite producing the same types of DNA changes found in nature, is often regulated and debated as though it were fundamentally different. A CRISPR-edited tomato with enhanced nutrition may face more regulatory hurdles than a variety created decades ago by exposing seeds to radiation — even though both contain mutations of the same kind. This is why in plants genome editing is usually referred to as precision breeding. It allows a breeder to do something they could try to do with traditional techniques, but more precisely, and with far fewer of the unplanned mutations which come with every generation of conventional breeding methods.

The paper suggests that our focus should shift from how a mutation arose to what it does. Does it make food safer, more nutritious, or more resilient to climate change? If so, does the process by which that change occurred really matter?

Mutations for a changing world

As the global population grows and the climate becomes more unpredictable, the stakes of crop improvement are rising. Plant breeders need access to tools that can help them develop crop varieties to withstand drought, resist pests, and thrive in a range of soil type and conditions, all while satisfying consumer preferences for taste, nutrition, and shelf life.

Random mutation, whether natural or induced, will always play a role. But targeted genome editing allows us to guide the process more deliberately. Instead of hoping for a beneficial mutation to arise, we can recreate known combinations of genes in new crop varieties or even design entirely new traits.

The challenges of feeding a growing global population and doing so more sustainably are vast and traditional plant breeding is a time-consuming process of incremental improvement. Genome editing reduces the time it takes to develop new, better, and more sustainable varieties of crops.

Importantly, the authors also stress that no single approach is sufficient. Genome editing complements — rather than replaces — existing practices of conventional breeding, germplasm conservation, and farmer knowledge. The goal is not to abandon this diversity of methods, but to expand the toolbox available to tackle agriculture’s greatest challenges.

Beyond the lab: ethics and equity

While the paper focuses mainly on the science of mutations, it hints at broader questions. Who decides which mutations are desirable? How do we ensure that genome editing benefits smallholder farmers as well as large-scale agriculture? And how do we balance innovation with the preservation of traditional crops and farming practices?

These are not just technical questions but cultural and ethical ones. Food is deeply tied to identity, tradition, and trust. If mutations are the raw material of agriculture, society must decide how to use them responsibly.

But it is vitally important that those decisions, and the public conversation surrounding then, are based on a solid understanding of how these newer forms of breeding relate to the spontaneous and human-induced mutations which have underpinned the development of agriculture and food production for thousands of years.

A celebration of mutants

The review paper is, at its heart, a call to rethink how we view mutations. Far from being aberrations, they are the sparks of novelty that have given us the diversity of crops we depend on. Every mouthful of bread, fruit, or vegetable is, in some sense, a celebration of mutants — beautiful, delicious, and essential.

If history is any guide, the crops of the future – and with it our ability to feed a growing population in the face of a changing climate – will continue to be shaped by both chance and choice, by a combination of natural variation and human ingenuity.

Dr Anthony Hopkins joined the British Society of Plant Breeders (BSPB) as head of policy in January 2024. He was previously chief crops adviser at the National Farmers’ Union. Find Anthony on LinkedIn

A version of this article was originally posted at Science for Sustainable Agriculture and has been reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit the original author and provide links to both the GLP and the original article. Find Science for Sustainable Agriculture on X @SciSustAg

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Studying the effects of coffee is particularly challenging. Isolating for a beverage with over 1000 compounds is so tricky that all studies tend to be population effect studies or literary reviews.

Improvements in isolation techniques have, however, helped scientists dive deeper into the ways certain coffee compounds are affected by the way we prepare our coffee ….

Kim Y, eta al (2019) show coffee consumed at the rate of 3 to 4 cups (80-100mg of caffeine each) daily does reduce all-cause mortality …. Meta-analyses and literature reviews show that coffee consumption benefits the full range of cardiovascular health, cognitive disorders, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, inflammation, cancer, and heart disease.

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.SIGN UPTo gain the benefits of coffee-drinking, how it is roasted and brewed are more important than whether you’re using organic or conventional beans. … Using a medium roast and brewing it for three minutes is the most effective way to extract its beneficial compounds.

…

All-day coffee drinkers experience fewer health benefits than morning drinkers, possibly because they are more likely to ingest more than the recommended four cups a day.

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here

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