Why are people fearful of GMOs?

I answered that question and others like it for Roberto Ferdman in a piece at the Washington Post.

Here's one excerpt

“Ok, let’s talk about the future now. Would you say that we have hit the peak of GMO aversion?

You know, I actually have no idea. These things are really hard to predict. Much harder than most people realize.

Let’s suppose you had some really large food safety scare, which touched GMO crops even tangentially. That would sway opinions incredibly quickly. Now that doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen, and I certainly don’t think it will, but it’s not out of the question.

The other way it could go, however, is that someone introduces a biotech crop that captures the public’s imagination but doesn’t scare them. That way, people warm up to a GMO crop that is more approachable, and in doing so, become desensitized to the bizarreness or strangeness about GMO crops that they once felt.

A perfect example is this new arctic apple, which doesn’t brown. Especially if it isn’t made by some big agricultural behemoth, like Monsanto.

But people might also just realize that most of the cheese they eat is made with enzymes that are genetically engineered. Diabetics, after all, use insulin that is made from a genetically engineered bacteria or yeast.”

Jurassic World

On Father's day, we had a family outing to see the new movie Jurassic World, which set box office sales records when it was released about a week ago.  

It was an entertaining flick with some good visuals and graphics.  But, I also couldn't help seeing part of the film as an implicit critique against genetically modified food.  There is one scene where one of the bad guys is discussing the new transgenic beast they've created, and his dialog was almost verbatim from the talking points from pro-biotech groups.  A couple comments I remember him saying (though these aren't exact quotes)  were things like "nothing's natural here" and "we've been genetically modifying things since the beginning".  

In many ways the new animal they created reminds me much more of what might happen from mutagenesis (a technique widely practice in plant breeding for many decades and is NOT regulated as biotechnology, in which seeds are exposed to radiation or chemicals to cause mutations).  The reason I say that is  mutagenesis could cause several possible (and unexpected) genetic changes, which is exactly what happened with the dinosaur.  By contrast,  transgenic (or intragenic) biotechnology typically involves moving one gene from one species (or within a species) to another, in cases where it is well understood what the particular gene does.  

What the movie described as occurring with the dinosaur was pretty far flung as far as the genetics go. It was asserted that because the dinosaur had genes from a certain frog it could take on not only the intended frog-characteristic but also other frog-like characteristics, even supernatural type camouflaging that avoided heat sensing.   

In any event, one of the ironies of the move is (SPOILER ALERT) that the new genetically engineered beast is (partially) defeated by the evil genetic villains of the first movie - the velociraptors.  The story's hero has learned to train and communicate with the velociraptors.  So maybe the final lesson the movie makers are trying to get across isn't that all biotechnology is bad - just that we should sure we know how to control the technology to affect good ends.  

Alas, I doubt that's the lesson the millions of movie goers will take home.  Rather, they're more likely left with the impression that genetic modification is a dangerous, uncontrollable technology used by evil capitalists just to make a buck.  Even though there are hundreds of scientists trying to communicate with the public on this issue, they rarely (never?) have such an audience like this movie will draw.

Or, maybe I'm just reading too much in to it.  My kids were thoroughly entertained, and when I asked them what lessons they learned from the movie, neither mentioned anything remotely related to GMOs.  

How do people respond to scientific information about GMOs and climate change?

The journal Food Policy just published a paper by Brandon McFadden and me that explores how consumers respond to scientific information about genetically engineered foods and about climate change.  The paper was motivated by some previous work we'd done where we found that people didn't always respond as anticipated to television advertisements encouraging them to vote for or against mandatory labels on GMOs.  

In this study, respondents were shown a collection of statements from authoritative scientific bodies (like the National Academies of Science and United Nations) about the safety of eating approved GMOs or the risk of climate change.  Then we asked respondents whether they were more or less likely to believe GMOs were safe to eat or whether the earth was warming more than it would have otherwise due to human activities.    

We classified people as "conservative" (if they stuck with their prior beliefs regardless of the information), "convergent" (if they changed their beliefs in a way consistent with the scientific information), or "divergent" (if they changed their beliefs in a way inconsistent with the scientific information). 

We then explored the factors that explained how people responded to the information.  As it turns out, one of the most important factors determining how you respond to information is your prior belief.  If your priors were that GMOs were safe to eat and that global warming was occurring, you were more likely to find the information credible and respond in a "rational" (or Bayesian updating) way.  

Here are a couple graphs from the paper illustrating that result (where believers already tended to believe the information contained in the scientific statements and deniers did not).  As the results below show, the "deniers" were more likely to be "divergent" - that is, the provision scientific information caused them to be more likely to believe the opposite of the message conveyed in the scientific information.  

We also explored a host of other psychological factors that influenced how people responded to scientific information.  Here's the abstract:

“The ability of scientific knowledge to contribute to public debate about societal risks depends on how the public assimilates information resulting from the scientific community. Bayesian decision theory assumes that people update a belief by allocating weights to a prior belief and new information to form a posterior belief. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of prior beliefs on assimilation of scientific information and test several hypotheses about the manner in which people process scientific information on genetically modified food and global warming. Results indicated that assimilation of information is dependent on prior beliefs and that the failure to converge a posterior belief to information is a result of several factors including: misinterpreting information, illusionary correlations, selectively scrutinizing information, information-processing problems, knowledge, political affiliation, and cognitive function.”

An excerpt from the conclusions:

“Participants who misinterpreted the information provided did not converge posterior beliefs to the information. Rabin and Schrag (1999) asserted that people suffering from confirmation bias misinterpret evidence to conform to a prior belief. The results here confirmed that people who misinterpreted information did indeed exhibit confirmation, as well as people who conserved a prior belief. This is more evidence that assuming optimal Bayesian updating may only be appropriate when new information is somewhat aligned with a prior belief.”

Food Demand Survey - May 2015

The results of the May 2015 edition of the Food Demand Survey (FooDS) are now in.

Results reveal mixed changes in willingness-to-pay for disaggregate meat products.  However, stated purchase intentions for beef, pork, and chicken were all higher than last month as were expectations of price increases, suggesting an uptick in demand for meat.

As was the case in April, this month we again noticed an uptick in awareness of news about bird flu and an increase in concern about the issue.  That's two months in a row of notable increases in this issue.

We added several new ad hoc questions to the survey this month.  

The first set of questions were in response to the spreading avian influenza (bird flu) problem.  I've had several media inquiries (probably in response to this post) about the potential economic impacts of the outbreak.  One questions is whether domestic consumer demand for poultry and eggs will dampen in response to the outbreak.  My understanding is that avian influenza does not pose a human health or food safety risk, but of course that doesn't mean consumers believe the same.  As the regular tracking questions mentioned above suggest, consumers are becoming aware of the issue.  To delve into it a bit more, we added two agree/disagree questions. 

About 23% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they plan to eat less turkey and eggs because of the outbreak of avian influenza, and another 32% say they're concerned about the turkey and eggs they eat.  That's far from a majority, but it might be a large enough to affect demand.  Whether these beliefs will ultimately manifest themselves in the supermarket remains to be seen.  

A second set of questions were added to delve a bit deeper into the issue of labeling of GMO foods.  Yes, this an issue that has been much studied, and yes, consumer's answers to the question can't entirely be taken at face value (as my questions on preferences for DNA labeling have shown).  But, there seems to be some activity related to a GMO federal labeling initiative re-introduced by US Congressman Mike Pompeo from Kansas and others (see this for some discussion and background).  The bill has food industry support and it would move authority for GMO labeling to the FDA (and away from the states) and would only require labels if the FDA determines a health or safety risk.   

The first question asked: “Which of the following best describes your position on labeling of genetically engineered food?” Over half of the respondents answered, “Food companies should be required to label genetically engineered food in all circumstances”.  The other 46% of respondents expressed a more nuanced view.  About one fifth thought labeling should only be required if there is a health or safety risk and another 18% did not have a strong position. The remaining 6.5% of respondents stated “In general, food companies should not be required to label genetically engineered food but voluntary labels are permitted”.

Secondly, participants were asked: “How should the issue of mandatory labeling of genetically engineered food be decided?”  They could choose from one of six options.  

The majority, 61%, of the respondents stated “by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)”.  Just over 10% of repspondents stated “I don’t know” and only 5% of respondents stated “by ballot initiatives in each state”.

Finally, the third question asked: “To what extent do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements?”  Participants were asked to rate each statement on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 = strongly disagree, 3=neither agree nor disagree, and 5 = strongly agree.

Respondents rated the statement “In general, I support mandatory labeling or genetically engineered foods” the highest out of the nine statements with a score of 3.86.  The statement “Seeing a label indicating the presence of genetically engineered ingredients on a food product would increase the likelihood I’d buy the product” rated the the lowest of the nine statements with a score of 2.84. 

Thanks to David Ropeik who suggested a couple of the questions below related to effect of labels on perceptions on choice. 

Chipotle and GMOs

Last week I mentioned Chipotle's decision to go semi-non-GMO when discussing consumer sovereignty vs. scientific integrity.  

I've been astounded at the voluminous, and nearly unanimous, backlash against Chipotle's decision in the media.   The criticism has ranged from discussions on:

• The inconsistency of Chipotle's position.  They're getting rid of GMOs in some foods but not others (particularly soda and in all likelihood the feed used for the animals).
• The hypocrisy of claiming to look out for customer's health while selling 1,600 calorie burritos.
• Ignoring evidence on relative risk of herbicides.  One of Chipotle's stated reasons for moving away from soybean oil toward sunflower oil is that that most soybeans use biotech varieties that are resistant to the herbicide glyphosate, which Chipotle implies is problematic.  However, as many commentators have pointed out the herbicides used on sunflowers are likely more toxic and are equally connected (if not more now that glyphosate is off patent) to "big agribusiness".
• And, generally stoking fear when the scientific evidence suggest there is none.  That is, they've been roundly criticized for being anti-science. 

Amazingly, I haven't seen one story in a major media outlet that has applauded Chipotle's move. Mary Mangan, aka @mem_somerville, has compiled a list of stories that have appeared on the issue.  Negative stories or editorials have been run in the New York Magazine, Wall Street Journal, Slate, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Washington Post, and many others.  

I'm not sure what these developments imply for the politics surrounding GMO labeling (an issue which appears to be gaining a bit more traction in the US House of Representatives), but I'm almost certain this wasn't the outcome Chipotle was expecting.  You might be able to pick up a bit of market share in the short run by stoking fear and paranoia, but when science isn't on your side, it's bound to catch up with you in the long run.