Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
willingness to pay was an 18% premium for
products without GM ingredients). In light
of these results, it makes little sense to say
that consumers accept or reject GM foods
per se - it always depends on the particular
product and its properties and not so much
on the technologies that have been used in
its production.
species and transferring them into crop
plants to make them more resistant to insect
pests'), processed GM foods with altered
properties ('using modern biotechnology in
the production of foods, for example to give
them a higher protein content, to be able to
keep them longer, or to change the taste';
see Chapters 6, 7 and 12), and transgenic
and cisgenic apples ('some European
researchers think there are new ways of
controlling common diseases in apples -
things like scab and mildew. h ere are two
new ways of doing this. Both mean that the
apples could be grown with limited use of
pesticides, and so pesticide residues on the
apples would be minimal. h e i rst way is to
artii cially introduce a resistance gene from
another species such as a bacterium or
animal into an apple tree to make it resistant
to mildew and scab. h e second way is to
artii cially introduce a gene that exists
naturally in wild/crab apples which provides
resistance to mildew and scab'; see Gaskell,
et al
., 2003, 2006 and 2010). h e average
attitudes of European citizens towards these
example applications have oscillated around
the neutral point of the response scale over
the past 10 years. When asked specii cally
about the usefulness and moral acceptability
of these applications, Europeans tended to
evaluate pest-resistant crops (including
transgenic and cisgenic apples) slightly
above the neutral point and processed foods
with altered properties slightly below the
neutral point. When asked specii cally about
risks, Europeans tended to evaluate all
applications slightly above the neutral point
(i.e. as slightly risky). Taken together,
European citizens seem to have rather
neutral attitudes towards GM crops, at least
on average.
On an individual level, there is con-
siderable variation: certain gene technology
applications can polarize people's opinions.
In light of the fact that people are rarely
confronted with products that are labelled
as containing GM ingredients (either
because there are hardly any products on the
market, such as in Europe, or because there
is no mandatory labelling regime, as in the
USA) and that gene technology is not much
of an issue in the popular press these days,
Citizens
Although people do not seem to distinguish
much between products with and without
GM ingredients in their role as consumers,
this does not mean that they do not have
any opinions about the process of genetically
modifying a living organism and whether
the use of the underlying technologies
should be promoted by public policy. In their
role as citizens, many people do indeed have
strong opinions about this. h e European
Commission has monitored the attitudes of
EU citizens since 1991 in a special Euro-
barometer series. Figure 15.1 shows the
development over time of the index
'optimism about biotechnology' (Gaskell
et
al
., 2010). h e index compares the estimated
proportion of citizens who expect that bio-
technology will have mainly positive future
impacts with the proportion of citizens who
expect mainly negative impacts. Positive
values of the index indicate that the majority
is optimistic, whereas negative values indi-
cate that the majority is sceptical. h e trend
lines showed that, at the beginning of the
2010s, the majority of EU citizens were as
optimistic again about the future impact of
biotechnology as they had been in the early
1990s. However, it is also apparent that the
heated debate of the mid-1990s had a
considerable negative impact: it took almost
a decade until optimism had reached the
same levels again as before the debate.
h e index 'optimism about biotechnology'
is a rather general measure of the future
expectations of European citizens. Besides
this index, all Eurobarometer surveys have
measured attitudes towards particular
groups of applications, including pest-
resistant crops ('taking genes from plant
