Concerns over genetically modified food tap into more than food safety issues, says Michael Mehta, director of the sociology of biotechnology program at the University of Saskatchewan.
Mehta conducted a study in Kingston, Ont., in 2000 to determine how the public perceives food risk. Five hundred and thirty eight people were asked to assess their own food preparation and shopping habits and rank five potential food safety hazards. To ensure a common core of understanding, rudimentary definitions of each hazard were provided.
“These questions don’t just tap into food safety concerns. They also tap into concerns about global equity, the changing nature of farming, the role of multinational corporations in farming. They can tap into some of the globalization equity dimensions too. They’re not just safety issues and I think that’s an important thing to recall.”
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Food with excessive fat or calories was the top personal concern to participants, followed by pesticide residues, microbiological contamination, genetically modified food and energy irradiated food.
“What the study shows us is that the public actually does have a fairly accurate understanding of food safety issues when you do start to break it down. They are not overly concerned about GM food or irradiation. They are concerned … with body image and body weight and that brings in the high fat, high calorie part of things.”
Mehta said people who were concerned about genetic modification, and there were few, also tended to worry about pesticides.
“Maybe people’s responses to pesticides and more importantly GM foods are a reflection of their concerns about these larger globalization, impacts on farming and other kinds of non-food safety issues. There are a lot of things there that are tied into environmental and globalization concerns that don’t necessarily fit into food safety.”
According to Mehta, people’s perceptions of food safety are largely driven by personal factors. He said the biggest problem for the public’s perception of GM foods is that people feel the technology’s benefit goes primarily to the farmer or to the chemical or seed companies, and that there isn’t a lot of benefit to them for eating this food.
“When you understand that and look at the benefits and risks, it becomes pretty clear that even with a very small level of risk for consuming GM food, even a theoretical risk for concern, you have enough of a driver to prevent people from accepting GM technology if there is no benefit.
“Why would we accept a new modification to a food if there wasn’t some benefit to us directly?
“Why would we take that risk if there was some theoretical risk when a lot of people say there was nothing wrong with our food in the first place?”
The biggest mistake of biotech companies, according to Mehta, is they failed to first introduce products that helped consumers.
“If reversed, if they had brought out nutraceuticals and functional foods that were directly beneficial to consumers (first), a lot of the concerns that emerged in a political sense, not here so much as in Europe, would have probably been minimized.”
