Public Acceptance of GM Plants - Animal Nutrition with Transgenic Plants - page 218

100

80

60

40

20

0

1991 1993 1996 1999 2002 2005 2010

-20

-40

Luxembourg Netherlands UK Germany Austria

Spain Sweden Finland Portugal Ireland

Italy France Denmark Greece Belgium

Fig. 15.1. Development of the Eurobarometer index 'optimism about biotechnology' from 1991 to 2010
(based on data reported by Gaskell et al ., 2010).

social scientists have often wondered where
people's attitudes towards GM crops and
foods actually come from. Detailed analyses
of people's attitude structures suggest that
attitudes towards gene technology are, in a
way, 'constructed'. Even in 2010, 16% of the
Eurobarometer respondents openly admitted
that they had never heard about GM foods
before (Gaskell et al ., 2010). Other
respondents may have heard about the

concept before but may never have rel ected
in depth about the pros and cons of gene
technology and its applications. It appears
that, in such a situation, people try to set the
core concept of gene technology - the
planned modii cation of the genome of a
living organism - into a relation to their
general socio-political attitudes and values
and evaluate the concept based on its
perceived match or mismatch with those