Synthetic biologists are one step closer to building life from scratch. They’ve just created a fully synthetic “SpudCell” that can feed, grow, and reproduce. Science like this rarely stays in the lab for long. It tends to end up in food, whether that was the intent at creation. And when it does, federal regulators aren’t doing anything to stop it. The only hope we have is for state lawmakers to draw the line.

Several states have taken action to ban lab-grown (cell-cultured) meat, but most of the synbio industry’s Frankenfoods are slipping past them: molds marketed as imitation meat (Quorn, MyForest); fake egg whites, whey, and blood made from genetically modified microorganisms (The Every Company, Perfect Day, The Impossible Burger); and lab-grown chocolate (Mondelez, Celleste).

These aren’t first-generation GMOs. Today, instead of modifying microorganisms with natural genes extracted from different organisms (like Monsanto’s rBGH), they use synthetic DNA. This technique was invented by Craig Venter in 2010 and appropriated by Monsanto in 2013 when it acquired an equity stake in Venter’s Synthetic Genomics.

Food made with GMO microbes may be toxic or trigger allergies. Back in the 1980s when Showa Denko decided to produce its tryptophan supplement with genetically engineered bacteria, 37 people died and 1500 were permanently disabled.

But they’re completely unregulated. Synbio GMOs enter our food through the FDA’s “Generally Recognized as Safe” (GRAS) loophole.

There’s no safety review. Companies simply declare their own products GRAS, and even that is voluntary. Food-safety lawyers argue this violates the 1958 Food Additives Law, but they haven’t won that fight in court.

Now the technology is leaping forward again. This summer, University of Minnesota researchers unveiled “SpudCell”, the first synthetic cell built entirely from non-living molecules that can feed, grow, and divide. It isn’t alive, and it isn’t anywhere near your grocery store. But it shows how fast this field is moving.

TAKE ACTION: Tell Your State Lawmakers To Ban Genetically Engineered Frankenfoods Made With Synthetic Biology (Precision Fermentation, Cell Cultures, and Synthetic Cells)!

LEARN MORE: From Transgenes to Synthetic Cells — How Food Safety Was Never Enforced

by Winona LaDuke, Minnesota Women’s Press:

“Our prophecies as Anishinaabeg speak of this time as that of the Seventh and Eighth Fire. We are told that we will have a choice between a scorched path and a green path. We must take the green path if we are to survive and to light the Eighth Fire of peace. Those teachings have implications for all of us. Here are a few of those teachings.

Seeds are our future, yet, in the world of globalized agriculture, things are not looking good. One out of four farmers this year will not be buying fertilizer, and more farms will go under. That’s a price of war. This will be a challenge for food that most of us will eat, and this is also a moment to grow, without the chemicals of war and conflict.

This is the time to nourish and replenish soil, not scorch it with additives that end in -cide, the word of death: pesticide, fungicide, homicide, genocide. Believe in life.

Our awareness of this crisis is opportunity. It enables us to reaffirm relationship with soils through organic and local agriculture and rethink how we treat ‘dirt.’”  

We can follow the instructions of our ancestors and guiding forces like Sitting Bull, who told us that if we put our minds together, we can make a good future for our children.

Esther Ndumi Ngumbi, The Conversation:

“Across North America, in places such as Illinois, Iowa and Texas, farmers are busy growing the crops the world depends on for food, fuel and fiber.

But as their tractors roll across fields, a pressing concern weighs heavily on many farmers: the rising cost of synthetic fertilizers, widely considered essential for crop production.

After an expensive spring, with the war in Iran restricting fertilizer and petroleum shipments and raising prices, farmers may be wondering whether they can cut back on fertilizer now and in the future to save money.

The answer has a lot to do with a hidden world beneath our feet, where billions of soil-dwelling, beneficial microbes help sustain productive, resilient and healthy crops and agricultural systems.

As a researcher working to uncover the hidden roles of beneficial soil microbes and understand how they improve crop productivity and strengthen plants’ resilience against drought and insect pests.”

Cutting down on fertilizers is not a bad thing. In fact, studies suggest that using less fertilizer can boost this natural workforce.

by Danielle Enblom, Organic Consumers Association:

As wildfire smoke blankets North America, most of the conversation focuses on climate and drought. But there’s a factor nobody is talking about: glyphosate.

Every year, thousands of hectares of public forest land are sprayed with glyphosate-based herbicides to clear the way for commercially valuable conifers, eliminating the aspen and birch groves that act as natural firebreaks and keep flames low to the ground. The result is a more uniform, more flammable forest.

Read our new article to find out what’s happening in Canada and the United States, why the fight just got harder, and what you can do about it.

Kat Lay, The Guardian:

“A homegrown catnip lotion has proven ‘just as effective as Deet’ as a mosquito repellant in trials carried out in Uganda.

Catnip, or Nepeta cataria, is a common herb from the mint family. The chemical in the plant that causes feline euphoria – nepetalactone – also has insect-repelling properties but this has not previously been commercialized.

New tools are vital in the fight against malaria, the disease spread by mosquitoes that infects about 282 million people a year and killed 610,000 in 2024 – the majority of them young children in African countries. There are concerns about rising resistance to insecticides, as well as the frontline drugs used to treat the disease.

In a study presented at the Society for Experimental Biology conference in Florence on Tuesday, a team working between Uganda and Wales found mosquitoes seeking a blood meal were less likely to land on people wearing lotions made from catnip.

Dr Simon Scofield, a senior lecturer at Cardiff University, said: ‘We found that a 6% catnip oil was just as effective as Deet, and the 2% catnip oil was only marginally less effective than that.’”

Researchers and community members have created a repellent, which is healthy and highly efficacious, but also allows local people to be involved in the production cycle so that it costs a minimal amount of money

For fifty years these companies knew forever chemicals were toxic. DuPont tracked pregnant workers back in the 1980s, found babies born with defects, and buried the study. They never told the workers or the regulators. They just kept making and selling the toxic forever chemicals that build up in your body, never break down and have worked their way into rivers, farmland, food packaging and all living things.

Attorney General Letitia James wants them to pay for cleanup and warn people going forward. Meanwhile the same companies, and their competitors, are still getting new PFAS approved for use on our food today.

Read the full story on the lawsuit here.

New York’s lawsuit is about cleaning up damage that’s already done. Meanwhile the same companies, and their competitors, are still getting new PFAS pesticides approved for our food. Tell your state legislators to ban PFAS pesticides before this needs a courtroom too.

TAKE ACTION: Tell Your State Legislators To Ban Toxic PFAS Pesticides!

Researchers at the University of Minnesota just built “SpudCell,” a synthetic cell made from non-living material that can feed itself, grow, and divide.

It’s not in our food yet. But lab breakthroughs like this, and whatever gets made from this kind of technology down the road, are not regulated, and often show up in the grocery aisle before we know it or anyone is paying attention.

We’ve spent years pushing for organic standards, GMO food labeling, and raising the warning flag about chemicals like glyphosate and atrazine. Most people didn’t realize the impact until it was already in our water and showing up in our bodies. But followers of the OCA have had a heads up for decades, knowing that choosing organic is the safest way to navigate our food system, as well as save the planet.

We believe in the precautionary principle and are committed to watching synthetic biology closely and putting out early warnings as it moves further into our food system.

Please chip in and help us push states to protect us while there’s still time to ask questions, before these new lab creations are something we’re being served without even knowing it.

Make a tax-deductible donation to Organic Consumers Association, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit

Make a tax-deductible donation to Regeneration International, our international sister organization

Have you considered making a gift from your IRA?

Adrian F. Ward ,Kristen Duke, Ayelet Gneezy and Maarten W. Bos, The University of Chicago Press Journals:

“We all understand the joys of our always-wired world—the connections, the validations, the laughs … the info. … But we are only beginning to get our minds around the costs.

Our smartphones enable—and encourage—constant connection to information, entertainment, and each other. They put the world at our fingertips, and rarely leave our sides. Although these devices have immense potential to improve welfare, their persistent presence may come at a cognitive cost. In this research, we test the ‘brain drain’ hypothesis that the mere presence of one’s own smartphone may occupy limited-capacity cognitive resources, thereby leaving fewer resources available for other tasks and undercutting cognitive performance.

Results from two experiments indicate that even when people are successful at maintaining sustained attention—as when avoiding the temptation to check their phones—the mere presence of these devices reduces available cognitive capacity. Moreover, these cognitive costs are highest for those highest in smartphone dependence.”

The authors conclude by discussing the practical implications of this smartphone-induced brain drain for consumer decision-making and consumer welfare.

Tom Perkins, the Guardian:

“The Trump administration has stacked a top chemical safety board with industry-aligned scientists who have a range of financial conflicts of interest and stand to profit from deregulation, public health advocates say. The Environmental Protection Agency’s science advisory committee on chemicals (SACC) is slated to review research for dozens of toxic chemicals during the new members’ terms. At least 13 proposed Trump appointees are probably conflicted on the chemicals that will be reviewed, comments filed with the EPA by a coalition of public health advocacy groups alleges.

Their appointment, critics warn, is designed to provide scientific justification for the EPA’s broader campaign to dismantle the nation’s protections against toxic chemicals.

Erik D Olson, senior strategic director for health for the Natural Resources Defense Council non-profit, which is among those leading the investigation into the appointees, said it was “clear why they were put on the committee.”

They are mouthpieces for the chemical industry, or consulting firms bought and paid for by the chemical companies.

by Gardenia:

“Marigolds (Tagetes spp.) are well-known for their bright, cheerful blooms and their ability to repel pests in gardens. But beyond their aesthetic and practical gardening benefits, you may be surprised to learn that certain marigold varieties are also edible. These edible marigolds not only add color and flavor to culinary dishes but have also been valued for their medicinal and cultural uses throughout history.

In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the types of edible marigolds, how they can be used in cooking, their nutritional and medicinal properties, as well as safety considerations for consuming them.”

Learn about types of edible marigolds, edible marigold parts, harvesting marigold flowers, culinary uses of edible marigolds, the nutritional benefits of edible marigolds and more.

Drinking Water With Meals May Make You Eat More, Not Less Sip water at meals to feel full and eat less is the advice we hear.  A Cornell and Penn State analysis found people who drank more water during a meal ate roughly 39 grams more food per 100 grams of water.

Land of Canaan An environmental meditation following Palestinian farmers and their ancient olive trees: living symbols of livelihood, heritage, and resistance. Land of Canaan documents a way of life, shows us what is at stake, and why it must be protected.

The Cephalopods Are Coming  A paleontologist who’s studied mass extinctions for over five decades has an unsettling observation: after each of Earth’s past extinctions, squid, ammonites, and their relatives exploded in number and diversity.

Boxtown Was Founded by Freed People in 1863, in 2024 It Got the World’s Largest AI Supercomputer Boxtown, a Memphis neighborhood founded by formerly enslaved people, is now home to Elon Musk’s Colossus supercomputer. Residents already dealing with high asthma rates from decades of nearby industry are watching a new source of emissions move in next door. 

Background Noise While You Sleep Could Be Bad for Your Brain Researchers at the University of Freiburg played soft clicking sounds during sleep, quiet enough that participants barely noticed them, and it still disrupted the slow brain waves responsible for locking in memories overnight.

Middle-Aged Women Are Ditching Wine Nights for Raves, and It’s Working  Women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s are showing up at raves, and a University of Leeds study backs up what a lot of them are already feeling: real mental health benefits from the dancing, the connection, the release.

Interview: Dr. Michael Antoniou on the Dangers of Glyphosate Now that the Supreme Court has sided with Bayer on Roundup liability, this interview digs into what glyphosate toxicologist Dr. Michael Antoniou thinks regulators keep getting wrong. Agencies test glyphosate alone instead of the full commercial mixtures people are actually exposed to.

Beans Are One of the Healthiest Foods You Can Eat, Here Are the Best Ones Cheap, filling, loaded with fiber and protein, and most Americans still don’t eat enough of them. This roundup runs through standout picks like lentils, chickpeas, and black beans and what each one offers nutritionally. 

Men’s Average Testosterone Levels Have Halved in the Last 50 Years, Say Scientists A new analysis tracking nearly 119,000 men across five countries found total testosterone dropped 54% between 1972 and 2019. Obesity and diabetes get most of the blame, but researchers also flag endocrine disrupting chemicals as a possible factor. Our chemical exposures add up in ways we’re still only beginning to trace.

This Farmer Wanted to Quit the Cocaine Industry, He Couldn’t A Colombian farmer pulled up his coca plants and planted cassava and plantain instead, through a government substitution program. The support the program promised mostly never showed up, bad roads, floods, no buyers for the new crops. Farmers keep getting asked to take the leap while the safety net underneath them gets pulled away.

Tampax Pearl Lawsuit Claims Tampons Contain Dangerous Amounts of Lead Several class action lawsuits now accuse Procter & Gamble of selling Tampax Pearl tampons with unsafe lead levels. There’s no known safe exposure level for lead.

Critics Say Argentine GM HB4 Wheat Is a “Failure” and Cannot Withstand Drought HB4 wheat was sold as a drought tolerant GMO breakthrough. In several regions it’s yielded less than conventional wheat, drought or no drought. Critics say the real selling point was never drought resistance, it was tolerance to glufosinate, a herbicide the EU has banned over toxicity concerns. The marketing and the field results keep telling two different stories.

The Rise of Blue-Space Therapy: How the Sea Is Helping People Deal With Trauma, Anxiety and Addiction Sailing programs for veterans with PTSD, surf therapy for people in addiction recovery, mental health practitioners are increasingly turning to oceans, rivers, and lakes as part of treatment.

‘A Public Health Emergency Waiting to Occur’: How US Industry Groups Spent Years Fighting Who Gets to Measure Toxic Air A Floodlight investigation found Louisiana’s public air monitors often sit miles from the state’s biggest polluters and skip testing for some of the most dangerous chemicals. One resident near chemical storage tanks started collecting her own air samples, only to have the state pass a law restricting how she could use that data.

Healthy Diet Too Expensive for One in Three People Globally, UN Report Finds The cost of eating healthy has jumped 25% in five years, and 2.69 billion people worldwide can’t afford it. Government subsidies have long propped up cheap calories like grains, while fruits, vegetables, and protein stay comparatively expensive.

We Know How to Mourn Other Humans, but What About Ecological Grief? Climate change is wiping out species and reshaping landscapes people have known their whole lives, and researchers are calling the resulting sense of loss “ecological grief.” There’s no established ritual for it yet.

What Canada Buried to Build Its Parks Parks Canada’s own internal review just admitted what Indigenous communities have said for generations: the country’s national parks were built by pushing Indigenous peoples off land they’d stewarded for generations. No consultation.

War-Induced Fertilizer Shortage May Be Reducing US Soil and Water Pollution Fertilizer prices are spiking because of global conflict, and researchers found an odd upside: decades of over-application left US soils packed with nutrient reserves crops can draw on. Regenerative farmers have been saying less is more for years, and now a war is proving them right.