Public attitudes about transgenic crops in Mar del Plata, Argentina

MARIANA LANFRANCONI; FABIANA CONSOLO; ALEJANDRA ESTEBAN; GRACIELA SALERNO

Goiania (BRASIL)

Congreso; IV ENCUENTRO LATINAMERICANO DE BIOTECNOLOGIA VEGETAL; 2001

Public acceptance of agricultural biotechnology has become a political issue worldwide. Meanwhile, the majority of the European countries, led to a strong public reaction against   genetically modified products for food production, in the USA and others countries like Japan or Canada consumers think that they would bring benefits to a lot of people. The attitude of people in South America is still poorly known. A survey on public perception of agricultural biotechnology has recently been conducted in Brazil and 63% of participants thought that the governments surveillance activities are weak about them. Argentina has become the second largest producer of transgenic crops worldwide in the year 2000. Despite this growing importance of biotechnology in agriculture, no efforts have been undertaken to educate consumers about this issue. Consequently, the public appears to be poorly informed. Within this context, a pilot survey that examines the public perception of transgenic crops was carried out in Mar del Plata, a cosmopolitan city considered one of the most important in Argentina. The survey was conducted before (1999) and after (2000) a TV advertisement performed by one of the best known international non gubernamental organization (Greenpeace) warning people about the consumption of foods derived from genetically modified organisms and demanding the labeling of products of this kind. This offers the opportunity to identify any change in the participants knowledge, acceptance and risk perception about GMOs before and after Greenpeace campaign. Eight questions about the degree of knowledge were developed, considering aspects of the respondents like gender, age and education level. All participants were gathered at exit of supermarkets in different places of the city. In comparisons, although there were 20% more of people who had heard about the term “genetically modified crops” after the advertising, this revealed no difference in the knowledge about them. Most the respondents tend to get information mainly from television than the others media. Nearly 50% of subjects considers that transgenic crops are those which have more production and only around a 10% thought that they are dangerous. People who have knowledge about the commercialization of transgenic food in the supermarket was duplicated as well as people wouldn´t purchase them. The majority thought that labelling of transgenic products is necessary and all of them agreed that regulation of research is essential for commercialization and production of this kind of crops. We noted that people are interested in biotechnology knowledge but more scientist information will be given to them.