Nutrition, food safety makes GM foods more palatable

The majority of consumers will accept the presence of nanotechnology or genetic modification (GM) technology in foods if the technology enhances the nutrition or improves the safety of the food, according to research from North Carolina State University and the University of Minnesota.

The researchers conducted a survey of 1117 US consumers. Participants were asked to answer questions that explored their willingness to purchase foods that contained GM tech or nanotech. The questions also explored the price of the various foods and whether participants would buy foods that contained nanotech or GM tech if the foods had enhanced nutrition, improved taste, improved food safety, or if the production of the food had environmental benefits.

The researchers found that survey participants could be broken into four groups:

• 18% could be described as ‘new technology rejecters’, who would not buy GM or nanotech foods under any circumstances;
• 19% belonged to a group labelled ‘technology averse’, which would buy GM or nanotech foods only if those products conveyed food safety benefits;
• 23% were ‘price oriented’, basing their shopping decisions primarily on the cost of the food, regardless of the presence of GM or nanotech;
• 40% were ‘benefit oriented’, meaning they would buy GM or nanotech foods if the foods had enhanced nutrition or food safety.

“This tells us that GM or nanotech food products have greater potential to be viable in the marketplace if companies focus on developing products that have safety and nutrition benefits - because a majority of consumers would be willing to buy those products,” says Dr Jennifer Kuzma, senior author of a paper on the research and co-director of the Genetic Engineering in Society Center at NC State.

“From a policy standpoint, it also argues that GM and nanotech foods should be labelled, so that the technology rejecters can avoid them,” Kuzma adds.

The paper, ‘Heterogeneous Consumer Preferences for Nanotechnology and Genetic-modification Technology in Food Products’, is published online in the Journal of Agricultural Economics.